Vulnerability

It starts softly as a whisper streaming like a graceful

melody off the tongue of the most faithful,

the most graceful.

The way it climbs and swirls, if you placed a paintbrush between

its dashing fingertips you could create a work of art;

the kind the common man can view,

the kind the usual see.

This art could build a castle if you let it;

It would block out the world of tyranny and

broken spirits and I,

I would rather be a held prisoner behind the fortress walls,

seal out the smoke clouds from my nostrils with concrete

and artistry.

I would rather be surrounded forevermore by the energy

escaping in tendrils from picture frames and half-written lines

constructed out of pure emotion with the

scaffolding of hearts stretched too thinly.

My bones crack under the pressure of the atmosphere and the humidity

that has been instilled in us all,

installed, step by step, by

a system that claims to prepare,

by a society that claims to accept.

My veins bleed under the knife of normalcy and

the postwar photograph eyes that follow me wherever I go,

the purse-lipped mouths who are impenetrable to

the songs floating around us;

they look as if they couldn’t let light in if they tried.

Behind my eyes and underneath my skin I can

feel you.

I can feel your words and your glares and the

grip around my intestines of your rejection, your forcible

conformation;

“what’s not you is wrong.”

I know. I’ve heard it before.

But I would like to challenge; if millions of you’s have created wars,

if millions of you’s have helped children find solace in the barrel of a gun,

if millions of you’s have created so much wrong

why,

why,

why on Earth,

would I ever choose to be like you?

Forgive me if I’m incorrect or out of line or maybe too brutally honest

for your paper-thin ears,

but what you are is wrong.

What you’ve become these last few years is wrong.

Your words speak to me out of ledges that try to entice me

and blades that call my name;

falling into your trap is like skipping off the edge of a cliff,

what you don’t say feels like a knife.

Tell me how that’s NOT wrong.

How many others have you taken today,

How many others have you hurt today?

I was always warned to use the buddy system and self defense but who ever thought

that high school words would be the ones to kill us?

I was always taught that diseases and mistakes would take me.

Who ever thought that you could die from a word?

You cut us down. You break our bones. And why?

Oh right.

Because we’re not you.

I’ll choose to start wars of a different sort,

the kind of war that can end the inner turmoil ever present in

the lungs of people like me.

And these bones? Yeah they crack but that’s so flowers

can take root.

With the blood that you spill from me

they are nourished fuller and fuller until from the base of

my soul they burst out of my mouth to

speak the truth.

So thank you very much for your uncalculated,

unbridled evil,

your irresponsible use of power.

Your ugly jokes, smart jokes, “loner” jokes, and the shoves to the ground.

Just so you know,

I still choose love.

It starts softly as a whisper streaming like a graceful

melody off the tongue of the most faithful,

the most graceful.

The way it climbs and swirls, if you placed a paintbrush between

its dashing fingertips you could create a work of art;

the kind the unusual judge fully,

the kind only the true can appreciate.