Fears

If we were made of stone we would
walk this Earth unconcerned
of anything, for anybody.

We'd trudge slowly forward
toward achieving our goals
without the slightest bit of
hesitation.

But we're not stone:

we fall while rollerblading and
skin our knees, yelping
for the part of us lost;

we scale a tree, higher and
higher, branch after branch,
ultimately losing our
footing in arrogance, in agony
on the ground, part of us broken;

we lie awake at night,
crying to ourselves (or God,
if we believe) at the uncertainty
of the ground beneath our feet,
our failures.

We have our fears,
of riding bikes,
driving cars,
heights,
spiders, or
the very thing we want
to be part of and cannot--
humanity.

These fears creep up,
unsuspecting, nurse with
a 3-inch needle and syringe,
pulling all the confidence
out of our veins.

No, we are not always
so fragile, rag dolls in the
hand of an overeager child.

(We cut through mountains
with dynamite-- BAM!)

(We stand in front of trucks,
statuesque in solidarity)

(We let freedom ring, from
North to South we let our
words echo, even if our
death is a consequence)

(We dream, and dream,
and dream, scaling mountains
with a flurry of imagination)

And...yet...we...falter,

masking true emotions
in violence, spending days
teary-eyed in bed, struggling
to even let a single word
escape our open mouths.

We are not made of stone
and thus our path undulates
erratically on the most
universal of human emotions:
fear.

In the worst of the times we
are even afraid of our self,
looking in the mirror naked
and exposed, wondering why
a monster is reflected back.

Yet we can overcome these fears.

Unlike stone, our form and ideas
are elastic--

with a little tug, pulling the
courage we suddenly see lit up
in a firefly dance,
we can transcend
these limitations.

We can go anywhere.