Crystal.

Never have I trusted an initial feeling. 

I never know what I love until

I've hated it. 

I'll never value it until I can no longer have it.

Never has anything been instantly clear.

Many times,

I start out hating things because 

I don't exactly know what they are or 

what they can turn into.

I might see you one day, and 

I'll have no idea who you are.

If no one gives you a rope, you have nothing to climb and see.

You're being shut off is as visible 

and transparent as a crystal.

As much as I'd love to know what runs through your head,

I'm not sure if I should know.

Workers do construction because something's gone wrong-

or something is broken.

I'd love to be that one person that

takes the cast off because the bones are all healed up, 

but I don't know if I'd be able to survive another crash.

And neither are you. 

I'll have no idea what the story was is it it's never retold. 

Like a game of telephone, no one wins,

and the original story is locked up

in a secret locker in your mind

that not even you always know the combination to. 

I understand this because I have 

so many rooms and filing cabinets full of the files

and images that lurk in the darkest crevaces of the scariest people.

Perhaps there's pain just beneath the surface that no one else can see.

Or maybe you honestly don't want them to. 

Maybe I hid for two long.

I refuse to let myself feel any longing for anything,

in the fear that anything might go too far.

Fear of revealing myself to anyone else.

The feeling of such a glove around me that grasped a little more

when a slip of my true self showed through.

Now, fully revealed, I find it hard to retreat into the shadow 

in which I had resided.

I empathize with  those who felt my silent wrath and wished I was a crystal.

So that they could see how I felt and who I was.

I feel the way that they felt and I know why it was nearly

impossible to see thorugh me.

I never let them in to show them. 

I, as them are forced to give up.

With no room to advance, I have more room to retreat. 

I see your cinder block, and in return I give you a deep amber crystal.

And in silence, you shattered it.

Human Dignity + Compassion = Peace,