The people do not speak.

Exhibit A - [First written aged 13, edited yearly thereafter]

No one can take it. They say no one understands.
But it’s rotting here inside me.
Why can’t you understand?

It’s been four five six seven eight long years. I’m weak with hunger.
I’ve been holding up too long. Help me. I know you’re strong.

I’ve been tortured with my memory. Starved of things I deserve.
And I’m stuck here on this land. Do you still not understand?

I’ve been thrown out of my home, sent to live on streets.
Pushed and beaten by fellow peers, watching them accomplish feats.
I’ve been mocked. Held before a jury.
But yet... no trial.

Their faces grew cold with callous hate. A verdict was said.
I was then thrown away, guilty of my crime.
My heart was as heavy as lead and just as hard.

Nothing changes.

I’m still stuck here on this land.
Can you now understand?

I once said I could forgive the Judge who sent me here.
But then I thought of the life I’ve lived
and still hated, this time without fear.

I am still thinking:
What time am I going?
Is this ever going to end?

Then I wake and I see:
I am stuck here on this land. Me.

Do you now understand?

Can you not see?
There is hurt rotting inside me.

There is a reason my poetry flows like this, because when I write (even when I write this) that's what I hear: beats, sounds, and a chorus of interjected replies. I hear music when I see words. I feel emotions as I hear music -- sometimes chaotic, sometimes harmonious.

When I speak to the public (and I'm motivated, present & prepared), I have been called hypnotic, charismatic, beautiful, memorable, inspirational, true. I am good at many things, but I know if ever I had talent, it blossoms there: in orchestrating those moments, in words following words, in pauses, in heartbeats, in tears, in the change in pitch a smile makes. In grabbing your attention, I pull at your emotions as though you were an instrument and the feelings invoked inside you were chords, played to the beat of my words. It is intimacy from afar.

But that isn't why I'm sharing these now. I'm sharing these now because once upon a time, this girl hiding inside me wasn't hiding. Once upon a time, I tried to explain. I tried to put words to feelings, where there had been no words before. I grabbed the apple. Original sin.

In my mirrorless world, I closed my eyes and tried to picture me.


Exhibit B: [First written aged 17]

It is a forest in my dreams
and a lake covered with broken ice
I’m sailing through the bitter air
The world is still
The people do not speak
and my feet crumble the falling leaves into dust.

The sky is clear, a crystallized blue-grey,
and water floods through the land,
soaking the mountains.
I swim through the air
A sharp contrast from reality
My unconscious controls
in my dreams
and chooses silence above voice
winter before fire

unrestrained
in my dreams

I awaken to a heart beating
and nature is singing
Civilization is pulsating
Passion inflames and enslaves
Reality becomes a musical
a tragedy, a comedy, a history…
set to the music of life.
The people… they speak.
My heart beats.
I follow its song.

unrestrained

Beyond the limits of my feet,
crumbling the grass to dust,
and my hands
They chill the water to ice.
I kneel, pressing to the ground
The beat slows
My skin embraces the chilled purity,
My soul cleansed.
Enter the silence
in my dreams
deaf to reality
deaf to the world
unrestrained

"The world is still / The people do not speak"
My wish, fulfilled.