#1

Robin
Why are you so negative?
Robin
You shoot your mouth off
Robin
You take shit too personally
Why can’t you just buck up
Grow a sac
Stop being so sensitive

I’m tired of explaining myself
To strangers who refer to themselves as
Family, when they were self-proclaimed
Friends, when they’ve broken the rope one too many times
I know you only care when you have to

Every time an individual strikes a match to my behavior
The tide in my entire body begins to rise
Nervous system goes into overdrive
Synapses snap crackle and pop back and forth
Explanations, marinating in 20 years of stomach
More acidic than ever
Reluctantly resurface
Stronger than ever
They ride the rising sea as it burns
Through physiological landscape
We always have to go to war every time
I know you only care when you have to

I’m tired of them telling me to thicken my skin
Don’t you know I’m without filter
Walking the earth in my own flesh and blood
Which is a lot more than I can say about anyone else
I’m tired of them telling me to thicken my skin
When the color of it has already caused me enough problems
The way I see it
Underneath we are all flesh and blood
I want to be flesh and blood
I want you to know how my body functions
How the tide rises
Where red wire tendons exhale from exhaustion
Where circulatory tubes are clogged with plaque
I want you to see where I’m wounded
Where I’m bleeding
Then you wouldn’t have to ask all these questions
In the name of strengthening friendships
But I know you only care when you have to

I'm tired of turning myself into an anatomical diagram
I'm tired of making myself easy to read and accessible
I am not your science project

They say
We came from the stars
I want to be flesh and blood
Bare red like the sun
No one questions the sun
And why it burns so brightly