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Labelled
Can you feel it?
Can you feel the pressure mounting?
The elephant sitting on your chest
Crushing you while you gasp for air, but there’s none to be found
Can you feel the poison slowly settling in to your veins?
Circulating through your pure and sober blood
While you reach inside yourself to try to drag it out
You cut yourself to see the blood flow and run your fingers through it looking for the venom
But you can’t find it
It’s a sick game of Where’s Waldo
It’s kind of funny isn’t?
How something as simple as a number
An evaluation
A label
Can push you over the edge
Can hold the gun to your head while the tears stream down your hot and red cheeks
You want to be free
You want to LIVE
But you can’t
It’s got you trapped
Chained and shackled in a dark room where all you crave is the light
Not food
Not water
Not love
But the light
The light of certainty
The light of positivity
The light of achievement
The light of success
When you look at that damned piece of paper and you define yourself by it
Your name is 90%
80
70
60
50
And then, your name is laughable
Your name gets you belittled
Ridiculed
Socially massacred
And for what?
Why? This is not your name
It is a mask
It hides your identity but not for positive reasons
It doesn’t hide you to protect the ones you love
It hides you to drive them away
The real
Fun
Beautiful you
Is gone
Your smile, glimmering like that of the Sun
It’s raw passion warming those that are in the cold
You give heat and light to those who have none
The mask keeps them cold and dark
Do not be the number you receive
For every question you answer correctly, one is answered right
Maybe not on the same piece of paper, but on another
And maybe not another, maybe it’s in the hallway
Maybe it’s the fight you broke up earlier in the day
Maybe it’s the elderly lady you helped cross the street
Maybe it’s the girl you told was beautiful, even though society says otherwise
Maybe it’s the cigarette you didn’t smoke
Maybe it’s the beer you didn’t have
You are more than a number
You are you
And you are beautiful
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