Wolfy Chai

To you I am erased.

To you I have no face.

But don’t I ever get a say?

People take your tongue, and tie it to puppet strings. 

Pull you around in whichever ways fulfill them until they’re pleased. 

Make balloon animals out of the words you speak. 

Force feed you what you must mean. 

But they know not what all you see. 

Art is the only path safe enough to take. 

When the vultures come to feast on your splintered remains. 

When all they see in you is fake. 

Dead behind the eyes, no feelings at stake. 

You hit yourself at first.

But in the end, you know you are not a mistake. 

Each day you sit there with your lips tightly closed.

Careful you are to not to leak any semblance of emotion, any particle of humanity, any flinch of weakness. 

You must remain standing stiff and strong like a flag in the wind—day in and day out you succumb to the beatings. 

You watch below you as the weak minded ones who were the first in line to berate you, retreat into their holes whenever something doesn’t go their way;drown themselves in pleasure or exploit the latest novelty to ease the aches and pains of their boredom. 

With all of this being said, you really do remain okay. 

You are equipped for this. Immune to any abysmal fate. 

Your strength is drawn by immutable sources. 

Every day, you rise with the sun. You greet the trees and the birds, the omniscient ocean, and the furry bees. They feed your soul with beauty, wonder, and endless amazement—seeing how each day they change. 

Little by little.

In the most subtle of ways.