Words

The words I need to say are the words I cannot

They stick like zoo animals trapped in the menagerie of me

Silent bystanders to glass-tapping onlookers

The words I need to say are the ones I can’t find

The ones that refuse to bleed out like ink on paper

The ones I should say to you, but can’t bring myself to

Would you even take them if I tried?

The words I need to say are often the most fragile

If I held them in my hands, brittle as paper

Would you hold them?

Would you live with them as I do?

Or would you maim them?

See, I know I have a silver tongue

But often it seems you mistake it for foil

You think what I say doesn’t hold weight,

That it doesn’t penetrate

But words, to me, have been everything.

Not just the lighthouse on a dark shore

But the tugboat pulling me to safety

The words I need to say are trapped somewhere inside

Tangled in the mess of emotional “what ifs”

Self-aware yet not self-assured

Not comfortable in the skin that they’re in

Because how could you understand the necessity of sadness?

How depression can be an appendage?

How I’d rather keep a friend that eats me, than have no friend at all?

How could anyone understand the maelstrom inside me?

This hail, this wind, this roaring caucus, this deafening din... is all my own.

So I put up my shutters, board up these windows,

Stucco and plaster these walls so you can’t see through...

Or maybe so I can’t feel through...

But the door remains open...

See, the words are this door, whether from you or from me

But regardless as long as they’re said, as long as they can live somewhere other than a boarded home

As long as they have a space to mean...

And I realize, though I’ll never admit it... that maybe

The words I need to say.. are right here