Speak with Heart

     Speak up, speak down, any direction, it just needs to get somewhere. Travel distances through your speech, when you need a bridge, let your words become just that. Say what you need, but say what you want every once in a while, just to keep things spontaneous. Never let your words become a prison, let others' words do that. Keep your words a skeleton key, letting you get out of these prisons. If you are a jailbird, let your words be your song. 

     The heart, mind, and soul are difficult to speak from, because you are yourself, not a heart, mind, or soul, but a culmination of all three. But with time, you will be able to tap into each. Time isn't of the essence, it is the essence. Let time flow on, because you can't speak your mind outright, only feelings at first. You have a mind, not wonder, passion, and dread, but a culmination of all three, and many more.

     I met you, speaking your mind, so skilled that for the longest time I thought you were born with the inherent gift. But after one of our long nights together, your mind spoke its history. It cried, and sobbed, was disgusted with itself, but then eventually found solace, after 18 years. And then I spoke my mind. It spoke with words of empathy and sorrow, and care for you. My mind had spoken, after 18 years.

     I kept my mind from saying that I wanted to spend my life with you. You kept your mind from saying that you were beat since you were four. Those words could have changed everything. From my mind, I spoke, "I love you." From your mind you spoke, "I'm an alcoholic." I thought for the longest time that your you hadn't turned to drink, because you hadn't spoke of it. But your heart spoke when you began having arrhythmias. Your soul spoke when you began having mood swings. And your mind spoke on September 27, when you drove drunk and couldn't think clearly. You hit a tree and entered a coma. Your mind was speaking, but nobody could hear. Many compared it to being on the other side of a glass wall, but I thought of you as in a bottle, not for the joke, but because you were slowly drowning, and you would die drowning, or from asphyxiation on the bottle's neck.

    You passed away after three weeks of limbo. The hardest thing was that I couldn't hear your voice at all, for even longer than three weeks. I miss that voice to this day, and all I have to go by is the choir concerts that you sang at, which makes me feel bittersweet, because while you are speaking, it's not from your mind, it's from some musical track.

    Since you have left, I've been able to speak my mind. It was your final parting gift. My mind may be speaking, but my body is cripppled with loss and my heart it sobbing. I speak up when I question why you deserved the abuse, or why any of us deserved your loss. I speak down when I look at the ground and see my tears splash on the pavement below me. But at least it is getting somewhere. I travel a lonely road with my words, and am not a jailbird, but a bluebird, and it will take a long time before words cheer me up again, even if spoken from the mind.

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