1.

When I was young, my mother told me to think twice before speaking.

But my mind is like a dripping faucet,

Droning on and on and on...

And the proverb says,

"Speak only when your words are more beautiful than silence."

Maybe that's why my anger starts bubbling,

Maybe that's why the unresolved rage steams and steams,

Until it pours out of my mouth,

Regurgitated rage that needs somewhere to go.

When I was young I used to have this problem,

Where every time I'd become angry and frustrated,

I'd yell, hit, hurt, and curse.

My mouth still remembers the chemical taste of Dial soap.

I was always a "feeler".

So when my dad stormed through the house,

Drunk off his own anger,

I anted up when the storm calmed.

I strung words together that no 8-year-old should know,

Unless he was raised by an angry father. 

I was that quiet, awkward child,

Who seethed with inward anger,

Dreaming of ways to turn it outward.

But, then again, I was always a feeler.

Never one to want to hurt another,

To watch them cower,

To make them feel the way it feels to be raised by an angry father.

So I wrote.

I wrote every day. 

I wrote well and I wrote poorly,

And I never cared because I wrote true.

Sometimes feelings don't rhyme quite right.

Sometimes bitterness doesn't look so pretty on paper.

But that's never stopped me,

It never will.

I still feel anger turned inward,

My chest still clouds up with steam.

But, I try to "speak only when my words are more beautiful than silence."

And when they aren't-

I write.