"I didn’t want to be a poet.Being a poet meant wearing my skeleton on the outside,knitting..."

“I didn’t want to be a poet.

Being a poet meant wearing my skeleton on the outside,

knitting chain-mail out of glass,

meant being so much more delicate than I wanted to be.

After years of building the bricks around my body, I

had to learn to live like a geode, cracked open–

set on the shelf with all the pretty parts exposed,

like a raw nerve,

like a half-finished root-canal.

Being a poet meant I was always going to have something to hide,

but I would never know how to.

I’ve spent the last year living like the biography of a dead man:

every scandal, every lover, every heartache brought to light.

I’ve got my boozy bad nights written out in black and white.

Everyone I know has seen the worst of me.

I am the most terrified I have ever been in my entire life.

But for the first time,

I am feeling.”

- RAW NERVE, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)