To My Dad.

My life in a letter

What could a letter even confine

Could a comma express the feelings so huge I feel like I'm being strangled, could my fingers describe the noose?

Maybe this is a way words I didn't say could somehow come loose

But would you even read it?

I guess I could continue that this is more for me than you but we both know that's just a thing therapists say to make it okay

But sometimes, when I'm filled with all these words I didn't say and things I didn't do like some ginormous balloon I feel like I could burst

But I don't.

I keep it in.

I leak a little so people can get an idea of what's within

I stay strong

Hate to confide

Because people have it harder than me and everyone is just trying to survive

Wish I could express who I am and what I feel all the time

But I don't know who I am 

and I'm almost never who I want to be

Carefree

Dancing in the halls, making puns about whatever I see

But then I look at a face not as content as mine and I retreat back into my mind.

Feels more like sinking in quicksand but it keeps my frozen in time and I can't get out because no one has lent me a vine and I just sit there because I'm in a bind and I just wish someone would just lend me a line and pull me up by my bootstraps and tell me

You're just fine

So I sit on my bed and wish

I wish I would talk to you and for you to get it

I wish I could be myself and never regret it

I wish I could stop making lists and go out and get it

But for now I will articulate my thoughts onto this paper, and then shread it.

This poem is about: 
Me
My family

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