Be Gentle With Yourself

You can tell them. Tell them I've changed, that you don't recognize the person looking back at you anymore. Tell them I'm fat, tell them I'm skinny. Tell them I'm broke, or rich, or lost, or alone. What they'll never see is the map lines. The GPS coordinates my feet have danced through. The scars on my body, like the topographic lines of an unknown place. They don't see the streams my tears have fallen through. The fences my feet have jumped. It is my story. My journey. It has been my hands 10 and 2 across the country. My knuckles clenched in anger. My stomach flipping in unease. The butterflies shooting from my heart; soaring to the moon. Close calls, whispered words, pillow flips, lunges through time. Your compass is not mine. Mine doesn't point north. It points straight to my heart, into my soul. Reflecting in my brown eyes, written in my words.