X: Hit Me Here

Today is the kind of day when I like to keep the shades pulled. When I lay under crumpled sheets of hazy thought that are too lazy to give me rhymes, so I write this instead. When I wait for hello and dread the goodbye. It's a day where I wrap my arms around myself so that I don't fall apart, as if it could stop the deterioration inside. When I limit my conversing to less than five words a sentence so that I won't concern others of today. When I lower myself into a hole where I am only known as a target. If you lifted the covers you may see an X slashed across my skin.

Arrows are aimed here. Each one is a reminder of something I'd shed a tear over. Or pull my hair out over. And screams are only a cure for the pain. Something that is welcome here. More welcome than I am. 

Memories are also welcome. They are vivid and sharp today. They can etch the horrors into the back of your skull.

Greetings are nice in the morning. Somebody wants you. But goodbyes are a tragedy of a different sort. They are heart wrenching, but even more so if there isn't one at all. Words just fade into oblivion with nothing to cap both ends of a string of conversations. It's a sting you weren't expecting. That's when the X begins to brand. 

It gets really dark here at night. And quiet. But there are no street lamps to flood the sky, so the stars are a clear map for any destination I'd like to get to. Even if I have no one to make the journey with. 

I might stay here for a while.

It's lonely and full of mirrors that reflect my flaws but it's better than having to walk toward the sun and pretend that I like the burn. 

When I'm done, I will walk to nowhere and when I grow tired I'll turn around and head back. Simple as that. Don't worry, I'll tell you what it's like there.

Smiling is something they can't force us to do.

Smiling is something they can't force us to do.

It is something we must bring upon ourselves. For people like you and me, our walls took so long to build up that we only let in the people that we inexplicably trust. And because the walls are so high, there aren't many people around right now.

I'm tired of seeing plastic smiles stamped on faces by society. One day, their cheeks will fall and they will be lost in a world that turned away from them. And they will beg to be let back into a ring of socialites because it's all they've ever known. And curls will deflate and nail beds will cake with dirt as the silence turns them savage. They will finally revolt, as they refuse to let themselves break, and they claw, until their fingers bleed, at the walls society trapped itself in. But here's the difference between society and us; They built their walls high to shelter the people within. We use ours to keep people out.

But maybe the walls are built all the same, we only use them however we choose. Maybe we all share the same walls, but they are interpreted into or own boundaries until we think they belong to us. And the rest of society lives inside the walls, interrupted only by the rare outburst, which is disposed of like any personal thought to grace their minds. You and I, we live outside these walls. The difference between us and the savages is that we accept it. We are free to find beauty in our flaws. And it only strengthens us as we gladly sit in the rain and count the lines on our hands, our screw-ups, the people we love, and the crimes we've committed. And in situations like these, I find myself pressing my palms into the earth so that maybe I can leave an imprint of my journeys and someone can know that they're not alone.

There has to be something that separates us from them. From the people who drink to erase who they are, until they become indistinguishable from the next. From the people who look down on us because we are free to love the wind and admire it because it is ever changing. Our chains will not be from them. We are allowed to hold our thoughts out in front of us and analyze them as they rest in gentle fingers that pick apart. And they shut us out in the first place because we were smart enough to realize that something was offbeat. Maybe it was us. We just knew it wouldn't work out from the start. But in a way it makes me grateful. While they're confined to one familiar area, it's allowed the space that gives us room to wander.

But when walls start to cave in they try to turn around and take back words that are not easily forgotten. It is thought that this is acceptable because they think they are above us. But you and I know that there is no competition that connects us to them. They'll try to pretend that nothing ever happened, and this is all a big misunderstanding that they are going to pass off as a joke. And they'll expect us to laugh. But smiling is something they can't force us to do.