(in)security.

A Poem by introspicere

draft. talking about how we learn early on to protect our fragile selves, but how e realize later that we'd built walls in all the wrong places, and taught them to tell us all the wrong things.

It’s weird.
I thought I knew myself enough,
and I’d hoped that maybe
going through the tangled heartstrings in my chest
would help me figure out how to make them
sound the love songs I’d grown up hearing.

But it’s not so easy.
from the time we came to our own consciousness
we’ve been trying to build walls to protect ourselves
haphazardly, lacking experience nor thought,

Hoping our pillow-forts and lego sets taught us enough.

But
I’ve put the glue in all the wrong places,
and reflected my failure in tetris
there are too many holes,
not enough reinforcement
and some of the walls I’ve built jut out
and hurt the very things they were built to protect.

Later on, we learn to build better,
by breaking down the mistakes we told ourselves
because of misunderstood hurt.
insecurities, we call them.

But it’s not so easy.
we build walls around our hearts,
and it’s kind of beautiful to imagine it a ribcage,
a solid container for the thing that
skips and jumps at the thought of
a split second of eye contact,
a hug,
a brushing of shoulders, or a touch of the hand,
her laughter at my stupid jokes
and her elating voice melting into my brittle efforts to sing

But this same ribcage
that stiffens at the sound of another’s name with her’s,
the same one that echoes and reverberates doubt
supposed walls of reassurance with the edges pointing back
to the very things they were built to protect,

it’s no wonder our insides
tend to scream sensitivity
when contact is made
underneath broken skin,

telling us they aren’t meant to be exposed

lest they be mishandled.

(...to be continued)