I Am Afraid Of Words

Words express what I need to say and what I shouldn’t, but always will.

Written they are raw. Spoken they are deliberate and flawed.

Words make memories and dreams crash and collide together, changing, shifting between what is real and what is imagined until I close my eyes because I cannot remember the truth anymore.

Words quickly become chaos, forming bridges between what I long for and what I know, between how the world really is, and how I see it.

Words are terrifying because they can both create and destroy. Because I cling so desperately to them.

I am afraid of words because they are powerful. With a simple sentence they can shatter confidence, shift a relationship, sever a bond of trust. In a line of poetry they can confuse, create, or calm an anxious mind. And in three words, they can change the way a heart beats. Make it skip.

Words are isolating. Words are devastating. Words are empowering. Words are beautiful and endless and unifying in a way that connects minds from every age and every world, real or spiritual.

Words are our greatest tool, our greatest weapon. All we have at the end of every day. And so I am scared of them.

Scared because they carry weight. Scared because they bring back old feelings I try so desperately to bury. Scared because they hold the deepest and darkest and most real confessions of my heart. Scared because they make me really feel.

And scared because they are the only thing that is kept silent and sacred in my head. Yet they are constantly begging, crawling, scratching to be let out.

And I will let them.
One page, one poem at a time.