open letters to no one

tear in my heart

tears don't often stream down my face.
my heart will ache, pound, hurt,
(tear to pieces)
all it wants
but my eyes still refuse to release even one comforting drop.
it's hard to explain how much
I agonize and I dream and I feel
when there's no watery evidence on my cheek,
but please, let me try.
all it takes is a smile and my heart soars, higher in the clouds than any of my classmates have gotten with their hazy smoke and indoor sunglasses
and in that moment, I'll listen to my favorite song and somewhere in the middle of the chorus my heart swells like a hot air balloon, gliding even higher,
and I think
'I am the happiest person on this planet'
full of blue people and bluer, bleaker laughs that say "I have nothing left"
(I can see it down below me).
but my pink skies never last.
as a child, I never touched a mood ring in fear of it bursting into color, rainbows flashing across my face that would tell everyone
I am d i f f e r e n t
(I felt too strongly, too much, and my thoughts and emotions were too big).
because the highest highs bring the lowest lows and it's been fifteen years and I still don't know how to have one without the other.
so I feel
and when I hurt, every corner of my body is sore.
whenever it gets b a d,
the feeling of the thoughts I can't get rid of pushing too hard at the confines of my skin makes me physically itch
and there's no release through my eyes; they never glisten when
I'm s a d.
my heart and head have always been at war but I'm forever leaned toward logic, and now that I'm older I'm beginning to realize that I may have learned to hide behind my brain because I was so terrified that if I didn't hold my amplified, messy emotions in,
they would bleed all over the floor
and nothing would be able to stop that flood.
I'm growing up and I keep discovering more about myself, so there are many things I'm trying to unlearn
but what has made my hands shake and heart quiver the most
is finally being truly honest
about what my heart is feeling today.
(and now that I let it show, I can't seem to remember how to hide it away again.
my heart is on my sleeve, on my chest, shining through my eyes and frighteningly out in the open but I'm so, so alive)