Bravery (spoken word)

I wish I could stand right here
and gush about how brave I am,
I wish I could take you to a battlefield
and say that I've won every single
battle that was ever put in front of me.

But tonight, all I am brave enough to do is to admit that I'm a coward.

That I need more than my two hands to count the times I've tried to escape my own body as if it was prison and not home.

I don't have no story about jumping windows and getting in trouble.
I wish I could tell you that I spend every weekend in a new bed but I, I sin in other ways

I lost my pride when I let a fool put me second, I lost my integrity when I decided that if I was to only have you on weekends, I'd sacrifice my whole week, I'd hand it to loneliness as if my time didn't mean anything.

I've been a coward since that one time you said "I never loved you, I lied"
that was the day I learned how to run..

I run from dates and from kind words,
I run from interviews, and jobs, and people who believe in me. I run from time with my friends, and I turn down everything that wants to make me believe I'm worthy

The only time I know how to stop running is when the taken hold me,
Just to remember for a second what your arms felt like, but I start running again when the memory fills me with pain

its been almost a year since you broke my heart, and even though I'm not bleeding anymore, the scars come to surface ever time someone calls me beautiful, every time they tell me I'm a queen.

What is there to praise on a woman that runs around like a wild beast,
with the wild hair, acting like she does not care.

Its not about how much they like me, its about the way I can't see why-
and its not about how they say they love me, its the way I can never tell in which way.

someone please come and make me young and unbroken, young and un-bothered, young and undone

help me find what I was before you
came in, because it seems like
an option is the only thing I know how to be.