Freedom looks exactly like me

Freedom looks exactly like me

I rode the train 6 times today from one terminal station to anotherYou don′t know you're one of the many people

I′ve watched fill and empty this train in succession

And out of all of them you're the only one I knew for certain would ask me this question

You asked how are you

Sometimes when people ask me how I am I want to say

I feel as though my heart may implode

Or that the blood inside it may boil over my ribcage

Leaving it looking like tomato soup stained stove elements

Or that I may at any instant shatter into a billion pieces

And litter the floor beneath your feet with myself

I want to say my mouth feels pregnant with the earth

My teeth are white picket fences of polite speech

Holding in shifting continents of a world spinning madly out of orbit

I want to ask you

Do you know how it feels to be pregnant in the mouth

With more than you even know how to say

And fear you may abort the whole world and everything in it with silence

You don't answer

Instead you just watch my mouth bloat with everything I′ve ever known

And I know it seems strange

But sometimes I can feel my blood changing colors like a mood ring

And some colors it becomes

Makes me want to ring it out of my veins like water out of washed clothes

Because I can′t always bare to wear myself when I feel this heavy

I can't always bare to wear myself when I feel this heavy

Freedom looks exactly like me

And I know that it′s right instead me

Where I go it's beneath my feet

Looks exactly like me

Exactly like me

I imagine you understanding as if we were speaking the same language

And you would say something like, you would say

The emptying and refilling of ourselves often leaves us fuller than before

But instead, I have to translate every feeling

I tell you I will start a revolution and protest the drought I caused in me

Until I bleed myself profusely and passionately back into myself

Until freedom becomes my skin wrapped tightly around the whole thing because

Freedom looks exactly like me because freedom looks exactly like

But I look up and see that blank face stare

And you′re nodding your head so consistently

That I wonder if perhaps you've started to drifted off into a hip hop beat to drown me out

You move in closer but still seem to be moving toward the other end of this train

So again I try to reach you

Freedom looks exactly like me

And I know that it′s right instead me

Where I go it's beneath my feet

Looks exactly like me

Exactly like me

You see before the revolution I wanted to tell you to hold me more

Because I felt I may shatter, collapse, and expose

These shattered fragments masquerading as a complete person if not held together

But the look in your eyes tells me

You don't know how to make glue out of your arms anyway

I wish I knew then that it′s not something you needed to know how to do

But if only the question

What revolution are you talking about? wasn′t hanging from your iris

Like a lost eyelash in unfamiliar fields of view

If only you could feel this view from where I am

Then we could say this all casually

Like we're talking about the weather

It wouldn′t spook you, it would move you

Because you of all people would know

You of all people would know

That it's okay to let small talk fall like a deep sigh back into its common cocoon

So that it can take the time it needs in seclusion

To grow wildly honest enough to take flight

And journey between our mouths seeing the world

But instead of seeing the world I am just on a train

And we′ve been stuck on this train forever

Feasting on little cities

Citizens lost and sitting on my tongue like an aftertaste

This is just the story of the lie I told you that day

And I'm sorry I couldn′t say more I just didn't feel safe

These words are like ghosts wandering the graveyards of things I should have said

Because when you asked me how I was

When you asked me how I was I assassinate truth

Turned autopilot on to auto-commute to an acceptable answer

Dug graves for the words that didn't make the cut between my lips

Swallowed the entire globe in one sentence and said

Good, how are you