(Surface)

     I would love my words to be right at the surface, ready to speak, clear and collected like a river. But sometimes they are tangled up or stuck behind walls, underneath broken bricks and rubble. All of my favorite curses and obscenities are faithful, they are the wild dogs that wait at the door and come flying out at any moment. They are not always bad intentions, but maybe a bit wild. The days I feel like an open wound, it's all I can do to look at you and not break. Some days I feel disconnected from myself. I sit here with a striped sailor shirt and my foot drums to a song stuck in my head. I want to tell you. I want to say all the things, but I can't. They stop on my lips. They tangle up and I try to explain my life and my family and how it is all tangled and tied up inside. But there isn't much I can say without exposing my heart.