when my only outlet is scribbles on paper
when the only expression i have ever known is
cherry words on a chalkboard
there is a defined limit to who i can be
because my mouth, what is normally a
vastly analytic messenger, is rendered useless when
i need to personify my heart
the redeeming words of my soul beg
to escape yet they build
graveyards on my tongue
so i write
i let black-inked pens rip
answers from my belly and
my fingertips deliver the incommunicable to
salvation
they turn cryptic mental hieroglyphs into a
language so beautiful that
most cannot understand it
but what happens is
sometimes the cherry words don't come
there are times when chaos spirals
out of my hands unforgivingly and
the senseless demeanour of it leaves me
scraping at strands far too weak to
keep me tethered
i revise and revise
and i revise
i dip the pen into my veins and
write with my blood
but the words cobble and wedge and
cannot seem to fuse between my
sharp edges
i become the human embodiment of a
helplessness so bottomless i
imagine myself an unidentifiable void with
unreadable fingerprints
if the emotion does not
leak from my knuckles, it does not
exist at all
so i lock the waste up in my chest
perplexed with the puzzle that is myself
and it festers until it is too turbulent to be
anything but a storm
and one day, when i am finally graced with
the relief of the right cherry words
i will fill endless pages double-sided with
thunder and lightning because when it rains,
it pours
-i only exist on paper.
