They're waiting there, inside of me,
Just behind my eyes, in my throat,
In my chest, behind the labyrinthine walls
I've spent my life constructing throughout me.

And any time I think I hold
A sledgehammer in my hands, it turns out
To be made of feathers that float away
On the breeze of the whispers I hear
Whenever I come close to coming close
To wanting to break through and find out
Just what I've been hiding.

Some day, surely, they will no longer
Be able to hold it all inside,
And everything will come flooding out
And bring life to everything I've seen
Die around me...

But that's what I thought last time,
Three years, one month and two days ago,
On a day that looked uncannily like
The one that has just ended.

So maybe I haven't actually learned
Anything I thought I did...
Maybe it really is ‘in one ear,
‘Out the other,’ as it was so
Imaginatively put not very long ago.

Or maybe there's a reason that nothing
I was told makes much sense to me...
Because I am not you, or him, or her.
Perhaps I really do believe that
I shouldn't force myself into
The lives of people who do not need me
Simply so I am not lonely.

Perhaps here is where I should be,
And where I'm heading is
Where the world will need me to be.

07/15/2003

Posted on 07/15/2003
Copyright © 2025 Richard Vince