It’s not so new that you’ve never felt it before/After all, it’s a basic human emotion/Though it may feel like you’re being pushed down to the bottom in the middle of the ocean/Drowning in the river you cried/Maybe because you told a little white lie/And hide it, you tried/And no one will buy/Into your big lies/And people will spy/Then people will pry/And they’ll try to be sly/And you’re just too damn shy/And more will come by/Feeling you’re about to die/And they all ask why/And you snap and you crack and you cry “I’M TOTALLY FINE. I promise.”

It’s like/Oh man it’s like the feeling of butterflies only so severe that they try to escape from the pit of your stomach taking everything you had for lunch with them/Or like the drop on the roller coaster when you begin to regret the decision of getting on in the first place/Wondering how your friends even managed to convince you despite your severe fear of heights/Crying to the maintenance man to “PLEASE! HELP ME GET DOWN! I REALIZED WHAT I WAS GETTING MYSELF INTO, BUT THAT WAS FIVE MINUTES AGO, AND I WAS JUST SOME STUPID PUNK, RIGHT? I’VE MATURED SINCE THEN.”/But that was only before realizing that he can’t hear you, you’re yelling into the ear of your best friend, and the only real way down at this point is to clutch onto the seat, hope you don’t get stuck, and wait for something good to happen/

We’ve all felt this before/So have I/You have too/It’s nothing new/It’s a test/It’s hoping the the best/It’s hanging onto what’s important and forgetting the rest/It’s the speech, sharing a message you’re trying to practice and preach/It’s waking up after the nightmare and thinking about the sick thought that even got you there/The first time/The organized crime/The climb/Find time/Buy time/Seek spare time/Maybe it’s high time to be serious/I’m/

It’s the first time I ever got up to read my own poem/I wrote with the intent of making at least one person say “I felt every word/Listened to every sentence/Grasped onto each syllable/And everything you said made me feel”/And I feared for my life and anything people thought of me and how it could change in a matter of only four minutes/And the ocean pushed me under/Anxiety/Anxiety/Anxiety attack/Shaking,Weak knee’d, sweating profusely/The lump in my gullet choking me so I’d forget to speak/Making sure I wouldn’t embarrass myself and having the god damned audacity to mock me and whisper “Don’t choke up”/Looking for an escape in both my mind and reality/Please don’t vomit on the stage/I recalled scraping every word on every piece of paper/Pencil pushing/Manic writing/Frantic trying to improve/Edit/Reedit/Keep scratching paper/Scrapping paper/Latching papers/Every word/Every saying/Knees shaking/I performed my own heart removal surgery to extract every feeling, liquify it to use it as the sad black ink/Hoping it’d be enough to mean more than nothing to you/

And through the speakers I heard my name boom/And I felt an impending doom/I had two choices I could make/The first was to give in and give up/Tell them I couldn’t do it, the the walk of shame away from the stage, and be known as the coward too scared to speak/Or the second, which was to go out there, face my fears, and read the best damn poem I’d ever written in my entire life/The first wasn’t really an option/Okay, maybe it was, but not a very good one since I was already on the set list/So you could see stepping out was hard for me/Shaking in my boots/’Don’t slip’/Papers wrinkled in the death grip I never knew I had since I lost every arm wrestling match I’d ever been in/Kiss the mic/Inhale/Exhale the words in a shaky voice/And everyone in the dark audience stared/And I let out the last words, took a bow, stood before/And heard clapping abruptly erupt and roar/A sigh escaped from the bottom of my almost empty lungs at the point and the sigh was composed of one hundred percent, all natural, concentrated complete and sweet relief/

A little girl somewhere is dancing, full of self doubt/A fear of forgetting the moves/But don’t you dare/Don’t/Don’t you dare let them step on your chance/you just dance, little girl, dance, dance, dance/Don’t let them be the killjoys to your hopes and dreams/Let them know that you are the little dancing queen/

Hey kid/Chin up/Don’t let ‘em pick at your face/Tell em “I’m blessed with skin stars and you’re dull empty space/Each, scar, freckle, or blemish a story/So please, run off, you’re beginning to bore me”/

Don’t let that vertigo ruin your speech, kid/Go up there with a good heart, open arms, and show ‘em what you got/

I recited nervously, but with no regrets/The butterflies settled/The roller coaster dropped/You flaunted those flaws/You danced/You spoke/You took a chance/And I recited my poem, purely out of the need to conquer my fears/And go big.