I have a story, I bet you do too (Revised)

Last week I had a conversation with a friend
and without meaning to inspire me he reminded me,
“The whole point of language is to be understood”

I wrote that down on a piece of paper in hopes of saving it for later,
“The whole point of language is to be understood”…

It’s funny ’cause just a few weeks ago
this friend of mine was a stranger
And years before that, the English language was even stranger

For instance, I remember when I was a baby; I had my own
ways of communicating:

Cry if I’m hungry
Cry if I’m sick or scared
Laugh if I fall down
Or cry again if someone’s watching just to have them
pick me up and hug me

Since then, I’ve learned so many words to help others understand what I want
but sometimes the things we say
can turn into ghosts that haunt
the backyards and playgrounds
of our hearts
Maybe that’s why making new friends can be so hard

I get shy just giving people my name sometimes
because I’ve come to realize
I’m not so easily defined…

First of all,
I consider myself lucky. I have scars to remind me
there’s a survivor underneath all this skin

This skin, is a smooth rocky-road brown
bordered with train tracks reminding me of where I’ve been
and how I got here
This skin, holds me close
like it knows it’s got something good inside,
something too good to let go

I’ve got skin to keep me together when I feel
like my world’s falling apart

Hey, look- so do you

But just because yours ain’t the same as mine
don’t mean you should treat me any different

What I do with my hands is far more important
than the colour of skin they are wrapped up in
That’s like if I gave you a present and you spent more time
criticizing me for the way I gift-wrapped it
than noticing what I put inside

Take a look at what’s inside!

Don’t let all this skin I’m dressed up in fool you
I am human too

It is so cliché
to talk about how cliché it is to it is to say
to “Never judge a book by its cover”
But I bet the world be a much better place if we just opened up
and gave each other a chance to get to know one another

I have a story, I bet you do too

Britta B.

About these ads