wanderer

The hair on the back of my neck

Raises and I am compelled to arch and fluff out my hair

Make myself look bigger

In the reflection of myself in the very centre of your eyes.

Why so defensive?

I could ask you the same;

Why I am always wrong, wrong, wrong.

Why absolutes and objective answers are what you often appeal to.

I cannot know the way I am going; I've never done this before.

I am blind on this particular path; going off of instinct and gut.

The barest of the bare, the softest and most tender

Skin is what the rocky road cuts and scrapes against.

I think I am in a cave, but I don't usually guess right.

I don't want to stumble; I don't want to die.

I want to get through safely to the other side

But I can smell iron-sorry, I can smell blood.

I can feel my fingers get bruised from where I knocked them

From where I flailed and almost tumbled.

I am clumsy,

But your hands don't reach out to steady me.

I can only guess which direction is true,

I can only go by the shouts that echo weirdly down the tunnel,

The slight incline or decline that comes as the earth shifts and moves.

I don't know where I'll end up -

The voices always beg me to tell, to whisper about, to indulge in the wonder of my dreams

But I'm blind still to the path ahead

So I can't really know what they look like yet?

What I'd prefer is,

Instead of saying how wrong I am for walking, unknowingly, this way or that,

I'd really hope you'd eventually tell me that it's okay

To be scared

A little fragile

And lonely in the dark.

~