I poured out my unseen bravery

Words to punch the gut of the stoned to

make them feel again

Marching on the soles of somebody else’s feet

Screaming to be measured with the straight line

of a ruler, placed on top of our heads

Measured equal in the camera of the seeing

Heard to the deaf, shaking the still

Erupting with cries for the right

to be separated from the lies disguised with white

It’s easier to look at, deceiving the camera of the seeing

except ours.

But the shoes I wear, the eruption of my throat

This body isn’t mine to hold up, along with

the bravery that was all in the mind, accompanying

the corruption of the heart, with history-making skills

that I do not possess anymore.

Rightfully speaking

there will be no cleansing the lenses of the Deceived

nor will I bring out a ruler not to stab but

to compare and contrast,

and tell us that we are all worth the same.

I store my inventions away in a box beyond the

moon that existed in my fantasy:

the past courage, the ruler

a cloth to polish lenses of the glasses that can’t see clearly

Instead of these, I possess desire to live, not

desire but entitlement

Belief of things that are not mine to be mine

But the soles of my feet belong to someone else

The screams coming from my mind belong to the voice

of a better leader

The blisters on my ankle

pained another victim, someone dead but they

yield more strength than I ever could.

Because of my not-so-selfishness

Rather titled entitlement

To get through the rabbit hole of thoughts

and say them out loud, with the shrill ring

that reaches everybody’s ears, like a fire alarm

Is to be slaughtered, silenced all over again

What became of me, how could I choose to prefer

living in this fantasy, where the flame never dissipates

good triumphs the lies, as fear trapped my voice

In another world, to tell you the truth

This body (of mine) belongs to another character

Perfect and flawed as she is, not me, but

I can pretend since she is dead

That burning fire the shade of her hair

turned into ash, her tombstone read

“to the fighting spirit left in this poet”

A plea to the raw and untouched inside me

to let her out and regain courage, march in my

own shoes in the world so pained that I left it.

Now, I look up to see stars

Compared to my dimension, they’re a different set

A reimagined galaxy

For the Scared to hide and wander in the space of foreign stars

And the moon with alien beauty

parchment instead of my notes app

Pen instead of weary fingers, a writer’s typing hand

I look out the window

The sky, it’s filled with unseen bravery, less hidden

from the eye of someone who wants to see again

The dark, vacant sky makes me see things

Clouds, resembling a cloth, a ruler, camera lenses shattered

and a misfit pair of shoes

once mine, worn by nobody.

I almost forgot the feeling of finishing a poem

Looking up to see the fire let out, my flame is back

The moon is mine; it’s real

Battlefields anew, here, they will leave permanent scars

To the real world-

I’m not scared anymore

I forgot the feeling of finishing a poem

and the beat of the heart ringing in my ears

is mine to belong to.

Everything within me is let out

Hair rising, a familiar ash color, with resemblance to fire

and I’m left

So still inside.