I can tell you anything with a Buzz feed article, the twitch of my fingers, and twist of my tongue.

I can recite the history of Namibia, essays behind the Bolivian revolution, the place and time of the death of Alexander Hamilton.

But I can't explain to you how they felt, how they thought.
How they swayed in dismay and
coughed up soggy green doubt.

I can't understand their emotions because
I don't
understand
emotions.

 

They huddle in me like rebel spies in the crooks of a Romanian castle
snatching off pieces of me,
lost forever, never to be found like
the Lockheed Electra or the Edmund Fitzgerald.
They twist about at their leisure and dance through the labyrinth of land mines
I placed.
One by one.

 

The clans climb out of the cracks and have me cornered.
Dark cloaked warriors, eyes glaring miles past mine,
bayonets tracing my cheekbones
as if to only confirm there was no where left to hide;
the mind

is not a sanctuary but the beating of a soul
against the Berlin Wall, and I was born Russian.

 

But I notice in the corner of my sight, something...
to at least...
keep them at bay, my Lafayette!
At the edge of the plank, I grab the humor and lunge for the blanket of sarcasm,
eyes sautered,

hands shaking,

lungs empty,

and I can't tell if it's the phosgene or fear.

I pull puns over my eyes and wrap light-heartedness around my shoulders
And it stops.

Nothing moving, only glaring, as the spies grumble at my makeshift barricade.

 

But this isn't the end. I have to take the blanket off at night and feel the bombs against my already broken skin,
Again. Rubble.
I have to give my soldiers time to drink tea and sleep because otherwise they'll give up and revolt,
Again. Shot.
But my snipers don't sleep, don't weep, don't CHEAT the system because they're the last defense I've got.
Stalingrad stands on its skeleton of embers,
But dammit it stands.
Again.
Exhale.

 

I've always supported democracy throughout history, I enjoy the illusion of civility.
But emotions are not civil, not patient, not logical, not loving,
but enemy fighters, hungry for the thrill feeds them and restless in the walls of our consciousness just begging to storm the goddamn bastille.

 

I can tell you about walls,
I can tell you about bombs,
I can tell you about the fucking inventor of toaster strudel,
But I cannot speak my emotions, explain or even brush upon, emotions
Without my comfort blanket of wit or lack of it,
to hold up when they get too close and shoot at my toes

and make the Harii look like kittens.
Don't tell me it'll pass.

Don't tell me it's fine.

Don't tell me to get over it,

it's too late for Freud or Jung to say it's all okay
because I may be just a mad animal but in this moment I am dust.
Again.
Sweep.

 

History repeats itself and my mind is no different.
I eat my morning dread on dry cracked bread
and the warriors pierce my side just to make sure I'm awake.
It is the morning
Of the next day.
Again.
Fight.