Anomaly

Brokenness lives in my body
I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t this brittle
One minute I feel alive, the next, I feel dead inside
It strips me bare, and then it just breaks my heart
I’m nearly certain that I am not normal
I’m almost sure there’s no way I can be fixed
I’m an anomaly
An anomaly, an anomaly, an anomaly (2x)

Frustration is stuck in between my teeth,
Not on my tongue where it is easy to spit out
It demands my whole-hearted belief
Settles comfortably in my belly and proudly plays foul
Works me like a slave but still calls me queen
Not conforming comes easy so I’ve never been one to follow rhyme schemes.
Sometimes I think I want what passes for normal
Doubt packs itself in my chest and hits the snooze button
I stay drowning in the depth of my uncertainty
Prisoner of a mind that was once sane
Anxiety bends my bones and only I can see it
My fear is insensitive to my expectations
My persistence is tainted by insecurity
I wonder who’s more wounded; the openly vulnerable or those breaking on the inside.
I know I should learn how to patch my faith before fixing somebody else’s broken faith.
But I guess wet things stick together.
I have become the gasp at the end of a pain I inflicted on myself
I am headstrong where obedience ought to be,
Overly creative where diplomacy ought to be.
Thinking in shapes not yet habitable, everybody cheers me on, but I do the work alone.
And I wonder if the restlessness I feel is the absence of something missed or the anticipation of something yet to come
And when the world sees me sniffing back the tears, I pretend to be smelling God
And I’m teaching my knees how to bend in prayer,
but they bent down in depression and refused to get back up
how am I supposed to shoot for the stars when so much weight is keeping me grounded?

I’m an anomaly, an anomaly, an anomaly (2x)

So this poem is a one way ticket to you anomaly
You with your dream trapped inside your head
You tricking your body to feign joy so it can live another day
You forging selves out of your shape-shifting identity
You squinting hard so you can see the light
It’s blurry right now, but I know we’ll find it