Lighthouse

I’ve come to my senses, but I don’t know where to go
I just know it’s getting old
Losing here
I know all the answers - you don’t have to fix this
But I am so new to this, just being here
And they took all the parts of me
I wasn’t ready to lose
And I wondered if I’d ever wake up as somebody new

Tired run me down
Run me in the ground
I will build a lighthouse there somehow

April ran me down
Left me looking at the backside of a pig hurt
At the end of the month, mud thick as thighs was smeared across my eyelids and lipcorners and all over my spirit
So tired, this voice I am losing is both a red and white flag that tells a more honest story than my mouth does

I’m tired of the discipline it takes to say no
Of the daily quits and the daily ask
Each message a jagged skip and whatever groove I had finally slid into
Tired of being a thread always pulling through
Of showing up to a keyboard
Unimpressed by anything I have to offer
I understand
I, too, am unimpressed by my own biography

Tired of wanting to call my way through skin until
I am an indistinct skeleton, slinking out unnoticed
Perhaps then I wouldn’t be held the fire of my own splintered dreamboards
Shrink me tiny enough to escape failure
By anyone of my hundred definitions
Help me believe that this art was only ever an experiment

I’m tired of doing my best
Of telling the sugar to let me go
Of being looked at like the next shiny trophy
A feeling like a ladder rung, like an empty promised land
I’m tired of what it takes to get clear
Of how heavy the fighting heart weighs in
Of the not quite, almost, just wait here
Of the questioning of my own aloneness, of my own enoughness
Of my own too-muchness

April reminds me that I am a six-figure grave and
Whoever taught me what that would mean
Where is the triangle of blame that promise me relief one day?
Where is the relief in any of this one day?

I’ve played every angle and I’ve gotten good at it
So why am I losing it; my sanity
Now I guess that my life wasn’t built on my record to win
All that’s left is a prayer on my breath
I’m enough as I am

Tired run me down
Run me in the ground
I will build a lighthouse there somehow. (x2)

The truth is I am only bothered when I think or
I know I have completely lost control
My reputation, the feels, the knowing
I have chased and begged them home
Even in my dreams, but I never learned to lasso

So I’m doing my best for the thousandth time
To actually let it go
And anyone who’s ever eventually nailed crow pose or finally hit five miles knows
That repetition expecting a different result isn’t always insanity
Sometimes, it’s just a way of growth

I am flaking mud
Really, I am left in no one’s dust
I am miles behind and I am still winning
I wil never forget my own name
I am letting us all off my hooks
I am showing up, even when other people don’t

I am unlearning how to be tough and my fine hit curled kinks rarely dry pretty
But how refreshing to love myself however I become

I am not forcing resolve, because I’m not sure that’s the way life folds
But I am reconciling every version of myself
Because I want them to meet one day and have a good laugh at how right we swore we were

I am not made of formulas, so I can no longer respond on your cue
I'm gonna start asking questions that may make me seem slow
But I am labeling that a good four letter word

And I figured out that two pieces of dark chocolate a day are not adding more inches to my waist, than nearly three decades of stress I asked this body to stomach

The manna has come enough to know that I will not be buried alive
And I’ve never watched, but I can tell I am beautiful when I’m writing and I know there is a humble man saving the rest of his fourth of july’s for my firework giddy applause

And I don’t know where he is, but I know he doesn’t play hide-and-seek
And I know I want to tell him that I haven’t been waiting
I’ve been creating a hotel of stories he can thank for the shameless, crooked smile I’ve become

Tired run me down
Run me in the ground
I will build a lighthouse there somehow

I am flaking mud
I am waking up
Praise!
April is gone and I think may was a new sun and
I’ve never loved the sound of crumble as I do now
Under all that earth, I got soft, somehow

I got a second draft biography
It says: I’m not much of a sailor but I’ve built some sort of boat
If you judge me by my crew, I am thoroughly good
If you judge me by results
I am a two-time world champion of facing what I feared the most

I have been published by several renowned atlases, for my work repairing lighthouses using only sound
You’ll know they’re mine when you see them
How the lights loop haphazardly like they’re completely out of control

I will build a lighthouse there somehow