And there will be days when you are cracked open.

You will crack
Like a coconut
Like you’re falling from the branch
And every part of you will

Want to scream for safety
Too hard
I can’t do this
I don’t know how.

You’ll retreat into caves of cynicism
Self doubt
Pretending it’s ok and it doesn’t matter
Maybe they never needed or wanted you anyway
Well THEIR loss – isn’t it?!

And there will be endless days of nothing
Grey like concrete
Where you’re pushing into acres of emptiness
Crying into the wind
Where are they!? Can’t they see you, feel you,
Standing right here?!

The lies will call you then.
Too old / saturated / competitive / too long ago / not enough
Follow their ways, the sirens sing, don’t they all seem to know
the secrets you so desperately wish
You held too?

And it’s the fury of you that begins to rise
Burning and melting across the words and the worlds
Hot on your page, on your tongue,
When they turn against you –
Or at least it feels that way

Not that you are not loved!
There is always more than enough love available

But don’t you burn for something you can’t even describe?
They think it’s success
Convincing themselves with the straw man
You’re burning for the money, the attention, the accolade
Desiring their gaze

Haven’t they always had something to say?
But you’re braver now
I see you
Standing your ground now
Deep in your truth

And what they don’t see
Is what that took
What you endured to come to
Stand relentlessly in all you are.

When you don’t know either, half the time

But yet
Concrete
Cave
Desire
The places where the ground cut your knees when you begged it to hold you
And then
Certainty.

You feel the fire behind you now,
The one you tended for so long

The one you obsessed over
Dreamed of
Cried for
Leapt for

Over and over again
When the world told you
It wasn’t for you.

Not even the eclipse and the stars could stop you now
And why would they (they’ve been with you all along)

The times I’ve cried
The times I’ve said no
The times I hid
The times I reread your words like poison lacing my veins and bursting into devastation
Isn’t THAT the pain, the push, everything you had to go through –

Echoing in the chamber of your mind
Can I?
Am I?
Really?
This?

Yes
And yes
And yes
And yes

It will all be worth it.
It was simply what was necessary.

He tells me-
You can’t get a wolf tattoo!
You’re afraid of wolves

I smile.
No.
I was scared
Of myself.
Of becoming
Everything they said
I shouldn’t.

And yet-
Here we are now.

More raw
Raw heat
Burning with injustice at the hands of what we – society, people, what it is to be human, US – what we
Endure

Our palms run pierced
We nailed ourselves to whatever we had to hang for
And we carried that weight for SO long

And now
You
Are
Walking
Into
Light.

Don’t stop now.