The Only Words

I went back again and again
To any random place that might be holding
The misconstrued pieces of me
The wind to the north blew so much stronger this time
I had to follow it just to find
That when given the chance I always
Kept
Backing
Down
And no one pull me up
They just kept
Pushing down
Until dirt became so much a part of me
That no one could see the difference
And then I walked around
Equally defeated

And in the poetic excuses for a real word
I stopped being able to speak
And in the written honesty of all the things I didn't say
I censored out the very meaning

As if
No
One
Knew

That that wasn't me
But an imitation of what I wanted everyone to believe
Once again
I underestimated their ability to see

So, in all the searching
And all the pondering thoughts
Sitting at the bottom of bottles of whiskey
I never realized it was me
In the mirror all the time
And the way I sidestepped a glance
And all the people who knew me
Never realized
That's not what I was supposed to be
Chipping away at the complacency
That begs
And begs
For freedom

The way I did in my teens
At the last layer
The last speck of anything before muscle and bone
There is a thin layer
Of something that resembles me

A mountain of freedom
Covered in a few insecurities
And at the heart of it all
A great capacity
To love