I still struggle to dig it out,
that splinter you shoved into me,
down my throat without so much as
a shot of whiskey or
a shot in the dark.

and you are so certain, sure
of how to walk the world
and all her streets unfurled
when really you are justifying
dwelling in your fear.

But you look so damn normal and together
while I am flailing in the maelstrom of myself.

Here is what you do to me:
Idealize
Exoticize
Misunderstand
Validate
Vindicate
Vilify
Victimize
Re-traumatize
Reframe
Take out of context
Murder mysteries

You lecture me, slay me with
hidden sneers and resurrect me with
empty scripts and steal my mystery…

and mysteries become stories
and stories become reality
and stories shape the mind
that tells and gives them shape.

stories about “them”
stories about “me”
stories about “you”
stories that isolate us,
separate and set us apart
from the world at large.

You simply have no clue of how
the mind can terrify, filled up
with anguish, upset, turmoil, fury,
the mind makes meanings out of shadows
and is too easily taught
to fear what it does not know…

And that is your biggest blindest blunder:
You do not know what you do not know
and thus you fear the healthy YOP
unfurling from a set free throat!

Your mind assumes what it cannot
make out clearly or take out easily.

It’s a survival tactic.

But it inhibits you from being open to learning.
It inhibits you from being students of life.

You’d be well-served to sit our assumptions down.