For Stella James

They will string me up for this, strip me down and make a public display. It's the fear that keeps me away, crippling expectations, terrorizing all good thoughts. The balance beam wobbles, pulling muscles to keep from falling. I will fall, get back up and fall again. Inevitable climb, inevitable tumble--the impact keeping my monsters at bay. I may have been manufactured to hate, but I was only programmed this way, brainwashed with half the story. Ambivalence evident in every misstep taken with furrowed brow and then thrown away. Calculating margins in my sleep as if arithmetic and science can save the day. I am a pendulum of what ifs and what was, so blind to the inbetween that keeps me from floating away. So let me cry one last time, weeping to wipe the slate clean. Let me hear the wisdom the wind has to offer, the quiet touch of generations come and gone and I will do my best to listen. Let me open this chest to overwhelming pain, carry it with me just beneath the ribcage. An empty vessel to be filled with the wonders of human duality, the horrors of battles won and lost.