Of All The Stories I've Written, I Share With You, Stranger, These Few

Bared to the World

Here I sit,
my palms braced
for the world to hit or hold.

My eyes are closed,
but I am bracing for an impact
I hope will never come.
I brace for it anyways,
because I have a track record
of expecting the best,
but receiving the worst.

So I'm switching it up this time,
expecting the worst,
praying that I will receive the best.

But deep, deep down,
I'm expecting the best,
because I hope
that my world
is not as cruel
as I think it is.

My palms are open,
warm under the late afternoon sun.
I think this softness
is the touch of my loved one,
my friends,
my family,
myself.

I sit there,
palms bared to the world for months
as I wait for that moment of truth,
where I am loved or I am hated.
And as the cold winter air begins to blow in,
I identify this as the sharp knife
of my loved ones,
my friends,
my family,
myself.
This I identify as
what I have been bracing myself for
all these months.

What I will never know
is that it was just the wind,
and in reality
nobody even cared
to find me
and relieve my clenched fists.