Wonky

 

There’s a missing beat, a pause, a gap

A silent, shapeless crack in space

In the corner of my eye, in mirrors,

In the echo when I hear my name

A version of myself, if I fit better

Into this world, if I was brave

It looks like places I don’t go, 

And it sounds like all the words I never say

Around me, people move like dancers

Like they feel the currents of the air

Trailing beauty like streams of butterflies

While I move, awkward, 

Spilled ink staggering across the floor

They speak in song, 

In keys my fractured voice can’t reach

I stumble. My words come out in

Random jumbles

I’ve put my jumper back to front

My shoes on the wrong feet

But you

You tilt your head and see me different

Hear my words and catch the tune

Deconstruct the shape and story

Of a world that gets me wrong

You see the fragments knocked away

By hurt and pain and days like these

You clear the dust and shattered stone 

And see the sculpture it reveals

You call my broken phrases “poems”

Say the tangle of my thoughts, 

Scrawled like spiders, gets there faster 

Than the straight lines they all draw

You call my awkward dancing beautiful

In truth I’m usually not trying to dance

I’ve mostly tripped and I’m trying to style it out

But I’ll take it, yeah. It’s dancing. Thanks

And I know that I’m not done being wonky

I’ll fall down and I’ll get it wrong

But it’s OK to be this kind of mess

‘Cause it’s through your lens and 

In your world

That I belong