I grow weary of the worlds I carry. The ones I allowed others to create for me, the ones I created for myself to appease those so uncomfortable with the irrepressible  parts of me. There are truths of me that I haven’t shown in the centuries I have existed since I was small.

I hear the clock ticking, the grains of sand whispering to me that I have to move now. I have to do more than stand at the edge of this precipice waiting for permission to exhale the dust of immobility. To take my first free breath, and laugh joyously before leaping into the next whatever.

I still hear clearly the admonishments to be still, be quiet, don’t question, calm down, don’t laugh so loud, cry so much, smile so freely. Each one a binding, a board to be nailed, a bar to be placed at the windows where my soul was kept…