POEM: BRAVERY

Stop Putting Me in a Box

When you aren’t who you used to be, or your survival self, but a new optimistic explorer in life meant to break out of the box of definitions stuffed inside.

Stop putting me in this box!
It's getting darker than I deserve.
Four walls were once used as protection
to keep me in and not stray far. 

You want me to be who I was when our story first began. That wasn’t my chapter one, though, and so much I still needed to break its hold on me.

Here inside, I play the part where I had the key and found the code to solve life's mysteries. Happiness was dropped in the corner of this box, but shadows ceased where the light was promised and held me there, not knowing I needed out to see.  

Fairytales don’t have their closing credits right after two souls meet.

I spent my days wandering through the meadows in my mind and writing on the walls with blood and grit I'd leave behind. I heard murmuring breaths around the folded creases of my box. Years passed, and my shouts and weeps echoed while laughter waved in the distance.

I won’t be tightly wrapped or have a bow on top for your surprise.

My scribbles and scratches wore a pinhole right through the top. I could smell the Earth's aromas once masked by barriers inside. I heard sweet melodies and soft lullabies. I perched my head high, and with one eye closed and one in training to search with telescope precision, I saw more. There was more above me, out beyond me, waiting to explore.

Something grabs me, pulls me, wraps around me.

With strength in my core, I steady my stance. I push from within and leap through the tattered box that held me. 

I now get a glimpse behind of my silenced chapters written in graffiti that were vibrantly colored, sliding the spectrum of the rainbow and textured with the bumps I must have vigorously collided.

Oh, glorious days ahead! Goodbye, empty box. Farewell. I wish you well in your recycled afterlife, but don’t follow me. Stop, and watch the kaleidoscopic footprints I leave as I blaze my new trail embracing what I discover next.

I hope you enjoyed my take on breaking out of the box and doing nothing anymore within the lines drawn decades before my new chapter.

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