repetition: bravery

Maybe the bravest thing you did today was open your eyes and let the dust fly away as you kept blinking.  Because blinking isn't natural to everyone.  Maybe the darkness of closed eyes is your favorite place to be when you're awake.

Maybe the bravest thing you did today was fall out of bed.  Because falling does take effort.  Getting up is a whole different heartache.

Maybe the bravest thing you did today was look at your reflection in the mirror.  Practicing your smile because you're not sure you're convincing enough.

Maybe the bravest thing you did today was listen to that song.  The song that isn't only yours, but someone else's too.  Maybe that someone else isn't here today and you haven't listened to it in the longest time; afraid that the next time you do is the first time you won't cry because of it.  

Maybe the bravest thing you did today was shove the urge to erase the words that can be erased.  Online, on paper, on skin.  You've been trying to stop dwelling.  Please remember that erased doesn't mean forgotten. 

Maybe the bravest thing you did today was say hello and please and thank you.  To a stranger or an old friend or a teacher or an old man or a thief or a misfit or a hero.  Maybe they were the same person.

Maybe the bravest thing you did today was put on your five inch heels because it doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl.  It just matters that it matters to you.   

Maybe the bravest thing you did today came from a line you read in a book that made all the internal and external clocks stop ticking.  "It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing."

Maybe the bravest thing you did today was play the strings you haven't played in days because even though music will piece you together, it tears you apart too.

Maybe the bravest thing you did today was stand up to someone with words to change minds and not fists to split skin.  

Maybe the bravest thing you did today was run that last mile alone because the race was over hours ago.  

Bravery is a lot of things.  It is pushing a stranger out of the way of an oncoming train.  It is speaking ten words without mumbling.  It is shaky but sure hands and CPR in triage.  It is speaking with your heart when you know no one has ever listened to you before.

It is real names and real faces and real words before and after you got the rug pulled fast from beneath your feet; breaking you ankle on the way down.  

It isn't me.

The bravest thing you did today isn't the bravest thing someone else did today.  Comparisons are not what we're here for.  

I'm sorry I say real names were maybe what you didn't know you needed when I don't know how betrayed or surprised or happy or angry or relieved or empty you might have felt.  I don't know how the skyline looks from your desk or what colors you see in the sunset.  I'm sorry I say these things when I'm still Icarus.

Something was written wrong in my history. But I forget that I wrote it myself.

Keep turning the pages despite however many past chapters of incoherence or frustration or sadness or blank pages there are.  Because sometimes, scrawling your black and blue ink on the five-hundredth-twenty-first page will be the bravest thing you did today.