Turning Point

Blue was your
least favorite color,
but you wore it on
your skin like a trophy,
like it was something
you were born in,
like it was a gift
you were asked
to never take off.
Empty smiles served
as your silver and gold,
as your diamonds
and pearls,
you thought them
very well befitting the
scarves strung
around your neck:
those knitted little
must-not-speaks
that threatened to pull
at both sides if you were
ever to utter those words
that churned the very
insides of your stomach.

Here you are, facing
the mirror that never
quite gave you clarity.
You are anything
but true to yourself.

You spend your days
in a violent haze,
drowning in
your merciless thoughts. In your
head, they’re
boundless as the sea
but they end up condensed
to a single insignificant drop
that lingers unspoken
at the tip of your tongue
until you find yourself
swallowing,
defeated.
If this feeling were a
part of human anatomy,
you think
it would definitely be
a rib cage, for it holds you
hostage;
quietly asphyxiated,
effectively suffocated,
promising eternal safety
to the seemingly undying
ache it harbors – to
the inhales and exhales
of a hopeless entity,
to a Stockholm Syndrome
victim who never
knew any better.
If this feeling were a
part of human anatomy,
you think
it would never be a hand,
for hands always give,
and hands always caress,
and hands always comfort,
and all it does is take
away more and more
of your livelihood,
as it robs you
of your will to breathe.
These can’t be fingers,
you think,
because fingers
are graceful,
and fingers
hold,
and all you ever
seem to be doing is
falling
ever so gracelessly.

Here you are,
chalking your pain
up to destiny.
You are anything
but safe in your skin.

You lie in an
unfathomable mess
of adult urges
and childish fears.
You think your future’s
all written out
for you like a script
you can’t ever change:
Act one;
you are forever
defined
by the shifting of
your eyes, by the
hesitation of your
lips, by the worrisome
longing of your skin.
Act two;
you will always be
waiting for the chaos
in your head
to settle, for the
whispering in your
ears to speak
in a different
language,
a language you know
you’re allowed
to listen to.
The final act;
you will spend
the rest of your
mortality
wishing for a time
and place where
these words
could slide right off
your taste buds without
a life sentence.
And then you will die.

And yet, here you are,
entrapping yourself
in your own version of
black and white stripes.

You are anything,
but you are nothing
until
you admit
that this is who you are,
until you hold your head
up high –     not in pride,
but in recognition,
and appreciation of the
parts of you
that refuse to wilt
away, of the side of you
that refuses to
break at the bending
of your surroundings.
You are anything,
but you are nothing
because you keep
yourself imprisoned
in this shameful prism.
You’ve gone and
confined your own light
inside these hateful walls,
unaware that
all you ever had to do
to feel alive is to
just let it flow right out of you,
so it could pass through
and seep to the other side;
so your rainbows
could set the universe
into color, could set
their depressing grey
into an understanding
shade of
everything
between red and violet.
You are anything,
but you are nothing
until you tear off the skin
sewn forcefully onto your body
for the skin you were born in.

This is who you are.

And better aeons late
than never,
make peace with it.