Army of Perfect People

I write to be heard, to stand out against the crowd

I write so I am no longer a blurred face in a crowd of perfect looking people

People whose, for so long, very existences haunted mine

With their white picket fences and dazzling friends

With their lives seemingly all put together

Seemingly- it seemed so 

Oh, God, yes, I admit, I started because of them

With the hopes that maybe I, one day, may become one of those perfect people with their perfect lives

Or, if not, I could create a perfect world where I could finally fit in

But even those perfect little people have their perfect little secrets

Hushed secrets of a runaway daddy, or a long dead child, laid buried in the very garbage bag their mommy and daddy buried them in

I dreamed of a life, one without flaws

One where no one cried, and no one died, and no one needed to apologize because no one did any wrong

Oh, the perfect people, somehow, were no longer perfect, with the secrets that began to leak out 

But how so, if so perfect? 

Sly smiles, burning touches, things I thought I wanted, glued together in a whirlwind of the ugly- of the monstrous 

Eyes widened, I stumble, gasping for breath at these revelations

What to write about, if not for a life I wished I lived? 

True lives hidden behind closed doors, brought to life, and I sigh, sagging against the weight and pain of the truth

So I turn away, trying to disappear within myself to find, maybe, what I long to be

So I write

No longer for the perfect people, but for the damaged, the ugly and lost

For myself, as failing as the rest

I write for what I believe in, to express what needs to be expressed 

Words, so hard to say, explode on the page, a red slash of a tumbling craze 

Dancing letters, intertwining to scream of what is usually whispered, without reserves 

I write to be heard- with my voice, and with others

To make an army of invisibles, of seemingly perfects, to write as if to write only once

An army of invisibles, to take down crumbling walls, to free the uglies, to exhume the secrets

I write, to live a life of mistakes, of realism, to offer freedom to those who need a break from their perfect lives 

After all, we only write once