Stranger

I know I’m odd.

It’s like trying to piece together a stranger inside my own head who I have never taken the time to get to know.

I can’t even begin to fathom the trauma that created this beast inside my own psyche that I don’t even care to question.

It’s just there. It’s not a he or a she, or a they. It is just it.

I know how strangers look at me with side glances and judgmental thoughts in their heads that I will always claim to be able to hear.

It’s obvious when I put pen to paper just how true their thoughts are. It only takes one glance to see as much.

But how do you begin to deal with this stranger who has thoughts and feelings completely foreign to your own? Thoughts and feelings that relate in no way to the things you feel or say, or even dare to scrawl across the page, and then after, you show your shame to the world and lay yourself naked in front of thousands — millions — of people?

I often wonder if they have figured it out without knowing the absolute truth.

I do not share this inner stranger’s desires, nor do I wish to ever entertain them in my waking mind. Nor in my subconscious.

I am just a freak dancing between flowery words that paint a larger picture of this thing that lives inside me.

This was written originally in 2017

©2021 Shane Blackheart