I was once a girl who believed I couldn’t do much
and then I had to prove myself wrong 1,000 times,
and then some.
A woman is at war until she faces death and laughs.
I can’t help being the way I am.
And now I don’t have to
because I have the best excuse in the world:
A radio voice.
A radio voice after all that radio silence.
I am up too late as usual, on a drunken night.
Dissociated by the plasma-ruled overload
But finding a way back into my body.
The responders are responding and then silent,
and rock-n-roll keeps me awake in more ways than one.
It’s not the way of The Samurai to go against the grain of Self.
It’s not the way of The Woman to testify to her own power.
Or that was what I was told.
It’s my way, now, to burn myself towards forgiveness.
Purifying the depth as ego turns to ash
and love blooms slowly from underground.
I hate the way you stand so close to me. Bullying me with your need to be filled.
I know that feeling way more than I would like to.
I don’t know why I was born to rock, but I was.
It’s not something I can control, but it’s something I denied for too long.
Not the listener, but the doer.
Not the keeper, but the taker.
Now, I’m the listener and the doer.
On this night, I look for songs that move me,
and they keep on being my own.
It’s hard to admit how much I like myself, sometimes.
It’s hard to admit how much I don’t fit
into your vision of me.
You who detains me as a frozen image in your mind.
But that’s what this poem is for.
The drums in this song beat my body open.
The insides are outside.
The insides are outside.
The truth hurts but it liberates, like a mask does.
The body awakens, while the face is hidden.
I am losing things to hide behind.
I took them all away.
The things.
What’s left is this face that ages with time
that has nothing left to hide.
To the ones who could never see
the size of my heart
the weight of my fears
the labor of my courage
you matter only as far as I let you.
It went unseen,
but I saw it for myself,
and wrote it down when I could remember, in as many ways as I could imagine.
And yet.
And yet...
it was still my job to be so flaming approachable,
which interrupted all the remembering.
You took what you needed and ignored the rest.
It doesn’t break my heart anymore.
I just feel the future tense of heart past break.
What I couldn’t feel all those years ago.
What I feared is what had already happened.
What I feared kept me up at night.
And now what keeps me up is the getting at it.
I’ll never get it.
I’ll never get it just right and I’ll always fight for a voice.
Beauty will die, and I will still have a voice
that knocks on my door in the middle of the night
to remind me.
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