Things We Didn't Say

Freedom looks exactly like me Freedom looks exactly like me I rode the train 6 times today from one terminal station to another You don't know you're one of the many people I've watched fill and empty this train in succession And out of all of them you're the only one I knew for certain would ask me this question You asked how are you Sometimes when people ask me how I am I want to say I feel as though my heart may implode Or that the blood inside it may boil over my ribcage Leaving it looking like tomato soup stained stove elements Or that I may at any instant shatter into a billion pieces And litter the floor beneath your feet with myself I want to say my mouth feels pregnant with the earth My teeth are white picket fences of polite speech Holding in shifting continents of a world spinning madly out of orbit I want to ask you Do you know how it feels to be pregnant in the mouth With more than you even know how to say And fear you may abort the whole world and everything in it with silence You don't answer Instead you just watch my mouth bloat with everything I've ever known And I know it seems strange But sometimes I can feel my blood changing colors like a mood ring And some colors it becomes Makes me want to ring it out of my veins like water out of washed clothes Because I can't always bare to wear myself when I feel this heavy I can't always bare to wear myself when I feel this heavy Freedom looks exactly like me And I know that it's right instead me Where I go it's beneath my feet Looks exactly like me Exactly like me I imagine you understanding as if we were speaking the same language And you would say something like, you would say The emptying and refilling of ourselves often leaves us fuller than before But instead, I have to translate every feeling I tell you I will start a revolution and protest the drought I caused in me Until I bleed myself profusely and passionately back into myself Until freedom becomes my skin wrapped tightly around the whole thing because Freedom looks exactly like me because freedom looks exactly like But I look up and see that blank face stare And you're nodding your head so consistently That I wonder if perhaps you've started to drifted off into a hip hop beat to drown me out You move in closer but still seem to be moving toward the other end of this train So again I try to reach you Freedom looks exactly like me And I know that it's right instead me Where I go it's beneath my feet Looks exactly like me Exactly like me You see before the revolution I wanted to tell you to hold me more Because I felt I may shatter, collapse, and expose These shattered fragments masquerading as a complete person if not held together But the look in your eyes tells me You don't know how to make glue out of your arms anyway I wish I knew then that it's not something you needed to know how to do But if only the question What revolution are you talking about? wasn't hanging from your iris Like a lost eyelash in unfamiliar fields of view If only you could feel this view from where I am Then we could say this all casually Like we're talking about the weather It wouldn't spook you, it would move you Because you of all people would know You of all people would know That it's okay to let small talk fall like a deep sigh back into its common cocoon So that it can take the time it needs in seclusion To grow wildly honest enough to take flight And journey between our mouths seeing the world But instead of seeing the world I am just on a train And we've been stuck on this train forever Feasting on little cities Citizens lost and sitting on my tongue like an aftertaste This is just the story of the lie I told you that day And I'm sorry I couldn't say more I just didn't feel safe These words are like ghosts wandering the graveyards of things I should have said Because when you asked me how I was When you asked me how I was I assassinate truth Turned autopilot on to auto-commute to an acceptable answer Dug graves for the words that didn't make the cut between my lips Swallowed the entire globe in one sentence and said Good, how are you