They tell you to speak up.
To stand out.
Share your opinions and thoughts,
your hopes and dreams.

I could never do that.
I stood in the back, observing.
Mouth shut, hands together,
a fly on the wall.

They tell you to express yourself,
but I could never figure out how.
At least, I could never figure it out,
until I met someone who showed me.

I was still to afraid to speak,
too tone-deaf to sing,
too uncoordinated to make art,
but I needed to get the words out.

They were bubbling somewhere deep inside me.
Burning underneath my skin,
standing on the tip of my tongue,
but too afraid to dive in.

So I did what I had to.
I did it the only way I knew how.
I let it go, and the words came rushing forth
in a jumbled mess, tripping over themselves.

I wrote them down,
I hid them away, swore I'd share them one day.
And there they sat,
until it was far too late.

I sit down, now and again,
reading over my own words.
They tell stories, break walls, provoke thoughts,
but they're still too damn cowardly to do anything.

Now all I'm left with
are a bunch of words,
a broken heart,
and a world of regret.

But none of that really matters,
because it was the only way.
When the words were fit to burst from me,
I spit them out like fire.

He taught me how to stand up.
How to speak up.
How to look up, hold my head high,
and see things from a different angle.

I remember once,
not long after we first met,
he took me to a concert.
The music was loud and flamboyant.

It was nothing like my little bubble.
It was a new type of adventure.
When nobody could hear me over the noise,
I whispered my secrets aloud.

Setting them free was the hardest thing
that I've ever done,
but it was completely worth it.
And it was all thanks to him.

He was the cause of a lot of my firsts,
and the cause of a lot of my lasts.
But I wouldn't trade away a second of it
because I love these time-worn letters.

They made me who I am.
They showed me how to live.
They awakened me and saved me
and they set me free.

I thought I'd give this one another go. It felt a little empty and bare to me, so I threw in a little bit of thinking.