Two glasses of wine and you don’t belong anymore. It doesn’t really matter if you’re actually talking louder, it’s the perception. You imbibed and even though you aren’t driving, the morality police are out. You’re just a step away from being out of control, even though you feel inside so good – and it’s not because of the alcohol. It’s because you’re finally relaxing. Maybe that’s the problem, because when you relax, you laugh a little too loud – you get a little too excited and it makes other people around you uncomfortable.

So they bring out the Bandages and the Stares. The Stares aren’t so bad, at least they’re side long. Fluttering looks of annoyance or shame at your company, brief glimpses of being irritated in the shadows cast by their brows. They play with their forks but they don’t want to play with you.

They don’t remember being that kid everyone used to laugh at that moment, because right then, they get to exercise that power over you. They get to have that control, and it’s that control that erases the pain and memories of what it’s like to be scrutinized and looked at under a microscope.

The Bandages are the worst. The Bandages are a step away from hand-cuffs, but since they aren’t actual police man they can’t use Steel ones. They tell you to stop and after the Stare they put the Bandage on your mouth and they put the Bandage on your hands. Now you’re much more tolerable, no one can hear your silly ideas or your dreams. No one has to suffer the whims of your imagination or wit. It never fit in anyways. The Stares and the Bandages cancelled your program.

You’re at home and listening to the dish washer. You’re wondering why no one would want you to save the world even though you try. You feel like if you can’t have success, the least you can have is perfection. So you try to make everyone happy, but no one is happy, no one can ever be happy and you are always clawing at those smooth wall wells to get to the top.

It’s not because you’re different in the ways that people recognize instantly, that animal instinct in all of us that senses the bleeding and wounded. Maybe what they know is no matter what they do, they’ll never destroy that stupid amount of love you have. The fact they can’t crush the absurd helping of hope you have, that you’ve always have, through everything you’ve gone through. It’s not the kind of hope that says ‘I can get through the day’ or the kind of hope that says ‘Everything’s going to be alright if I keep plugging away.’
It’s the kind of hope that says and has no need to scream: I am Hope that is Certain. I am Hope that needs no karma. I am Hope that has no shame. I am Hope that always becomes the hero.

They told you a long time ago that you’ll be hated because when They run from the flames roaring from the ditch, and you kick off your shoes and run right towards the heat – that you’d never belong. They’d always hate you for running back and never running away.

Two glasses lady, and you’re worthless. You’re almost thirty and you can’t be trusted.

They’d tell you to turn your cape in. Just settle.

But when your cape is your heart, you just can’t tear it out.