Flow

Emote but with control, they can’t be seen

The flow of your tears get wiped away lest the stream wash out the forts built to keep strangers at bay

Laugh but gently, there’s no space for your voice in the house

Sadness is a phase, it too shall pass with the onset of a new task to focus on

The muffled sounds in your head doing a monkey dance

The popping of your vein from bridled rage

The constriction of your stance, the knots in your belly from holding them feelings in

The balm of coolness on your palm after an anxiety sweat

Growing up, the zipper on the bag of feelings ripped

But conditioning taught you better to place roadblocks for oncoming headlights, warning of a crash

You’d forgotten how feelings were meant to be felt, not trapped

You start your search for the lock before the floodgates get undone

But that’s the thing about them feelings,

Like a river they flow till they find their ocean of stillness

You can choose to hold, but the release they select

Undoing your locks, blocks, shackles and knots

They force you to sit in the wetland of your emotions

Till you’re soaked, drenched, immersed deep in

Resurrecting only when they open their embrace

With a liberated, rinsed mind and heart

Where do you go after

Bind yourself back in to be swept by the next big wave

Or learn to ride the ripples to stay afloat everyday?