My poems are filled with pain
Sometimes it screams in your face, and sometimes it just whispers from the corners of the page
Hinting at the darker times in my "coming of age"
I like to think it's because gold is best refined in the fires
And my dad tells me I'm worth more than all of it
He says it in the way he hugs me when I come home
In the way he says he loves me as we're getting off the phone
Like we're not strangers anymore, the choice that was always mine
And mom I'm sorry for all the distance!
Though it's not the miles that have kept us apart
I started setting fires on that bridge long before I moved away
I wonder if these adventures are my way of running
Trying to create space between the echoes of things I wished I'd never done (or failed to do)
It's cold out here, the way my heart gets before turning back to fire
They say you can't play with either and escape unburned, and I suppose that's true
Every time it hurts and I keep hoping that the skin grows over tougher
Praying my soul doesn't do the same
It's hard not to fear being consumed
I know I'm afraid of both sides of that coin
If I refuse to move the cold will break me
And if I don't, the fire might take and erase me
I'm not sure I'm ready to be made new, to struggle and rise from ashes
I'm as bitter as every drink I take to dull the ache in my chest
They say ignorance is bliss, but nobody tells you that it's held in a closed fist
Open hands come with open eyes, and I think that makes joy easier to find
Maybe it'll work that way for me, if I just let go
I used to lay down and try to sleep next to headstones
Thinking maybe I could sink through the ground and reach their bones
That maybe that would bring us together again.
I could never find a way to let the dead bury their own
The ones I've missed, the ones who missed me when they were here
Because I was always somewhere else in my mind, I couldn't live in the moment
I was dying with each one that passed by
But I've learned how to capture them with time
And for all that time I've stayed away from dentists
Not out of that childhood fear of pain, I know it's there
Hiding in these words behind my teeth
I'm only afraid that when they're found, I might be exposed by a stranger
Still, I feel it getting easier every day
And come what may, it's been one hell of a ride
I am growing, as slowly as the trees I miss back home
I guess only time will tell
When the silence doesn't haunt me
When my mind stops its spinning
Every word I put to paper is one more step to find myself
And when words have failed, I'll step out on the floor to dance
My soul screaming "I'm still here!"