don’t bother to sew yourself shut,
just stand there, hold yourself open
let them see your beating heart
vulnerable doesn’t mean broken.
change the narrative of sorrow
as it turns out, happiness is something
that you can borrow.
you can share it.
like a candle and a flame,
your light doesn’t need to be extinguished
share it, no shame.
you’re beautiful even when you’re bleeding.
I see you, ready for war
with your gun and your attitude.
I see you there, armed too
with your judicial vigilantism;
your sentence would be swift,
in theory. Painless even.
I am not blind to what you see.
I see the world for what it is;
broken, but beautifully so.
broken, but tragically so.
I hope you never have to see
the aftermath of what I know
you’re capable of. I hope.
So beautiful through the haze
of a gun that’ll never stop smokin’.
Thing is, the thing is,
they were beautiful too.
Broken, but beautifully so.
Broken, but tragically so.
We screw up. We make mistakes. We are flawed beyond recognition. We’ve got scars on the outside, the inside, and in between. We look in the mirror and grimace at our reflection because we don’t like where we’ve been or where we’re going and we never realize that we’re only human. We place blame like magic candles on a birthday cake. We demand outright that we be treated as humans, as people, as individuals. We proclaim our own humanity like the second coming. “I’m only human” we say. Over. And over. And over. And over. Yet, the irony is that for as much as we demand and proclaim and repeat, we have no problem denying the humanity of another individual. We will condemn the criminal, we will hate the illegal immigrant, and we will deny the right to a human mistake, a human error, to anyone who we do not deem a suitable human being. The homeless, the addicted, the broken, the plagued, the suicides-to-be, the divorcees, the hurt, the “white trash,” the “niggers,” the gangbangers – we’re all human. We are ALL allowed to make mistakes.
Let the small things stay small. Let the big things be big. Befriend the unfriendly. Give hope to the hopeless. Be a voice for the mute. Stand tall for those who cannot stand at all.
