How to See Yourself

After Audre Lorde and Laura Hershey

You strain against the words again, 

Carefully chosen to throw out to them

And you watch from wide, exhausted eyes 

For a glimmer of understanding

This person does not catch your honest tone, 

Your vivid memories, 

Or even your magnitude

In this offering

Instead, they seize up as if warmth is beyond imaginable

And scoff at your attempts to speak

You carry the weight of that unacknowledged part of you now

Its bristling embers clouding your perception of people

And wonder when it will ever be laid down

Before someone who knows exactly how you feel

And when you’re alone, at night, 

You’re fully awake with anxiety

With only the moonlight to see you,

Remembering the imprints of what you wanted them to know

But what challenges you most is that you believed them,

And performed voicelessness for them to keep liking 

The version of you they want you to be

So they can shape your existence into a simple emptiness

If there was ever a time to breathe deeply, truly, into the passion of being you

It was the moment you saw them nervously glancing somewhere else, 

Somewhere more comfortable to be

Because somewhere else was where you couldn’t be seen