1.29.2013

Words I Never Said: Corrected.

“You know sometimes we ummm, we don't recognize our dreams inside
our reality and uh other times we're not aware of exactly
what's real ya know we walk around day dreaming but the sunshine, the sunshine always is....

2ndVerse (Marshia)
I used to depend on your eyes to show me the way that I should go
My reality is blurry I'm afraid of being all alone
Your light has been my guide throughout the good and bad
I wish that I had spent a little more attention to my one and only sunshine
(Floacist)
Listen, I'd never leave you yo, I sweared on my grave
Damn what's that I'm feeling dizzy kinda getting faint
But it ain't nothing, didn't sleep that much last night
From watching over you but none less I'm cool I'm fine
I said I'm feeling fine so back up off me I'm alright
I'm here to see my friends and what's up with that blinding light
Said I don't need to lie down

I don't need your help right now
What's up with all the noises

all the running round
You've got it wrong

I'm not the one who needs the help in here
Yo, what's up with you, you're crying I see tears
Yo, what's going on, don't leave, please don't take her out
Said I don't understand, I'm kinda feeling scared now
I said it's getting hard to breathe

getting hard to see
\I'm not too sure anymore

what's going on with me
Please bring her back

connect me

talk just one more time
But it's too late the last exhale is mine

I just wanna see my lovely sunshine(Sunshine)
I just wanna bring back all of my blue skies
And if you take away my rainbow I will cry(cry)
Give me back my sunshine”

I can still vividly see that day that I put this song on repeat and sat on the couch that is in a landfill right now occupying space, and started writing down the lyrics to the second verse. This was one of my favorite songs at the time and the second verse is the verse that spoke heavily to me. It was hard. I felt childish to a degree, as I would go back and forth to the cd player, rewinding lines in hopes that I would pen it right. There was a mission to my madness:

I had planned to find a poetry open mic and spit this. It wasn’t mine. And I never thought anything about it. I wanted the audience to know this song. I wanted FLoetry to know, even if only thru waves of oxygen across the US, that this song had spoken to me. I wanted to share something. My grandfather had been dead for almost a year and after sharing a poem with a large funeral crowd of people and being told I should visit an open mic, I had become mildly obsessed with performing somewhere. I couldn’t lie to myself: What I felt from being up there, speaking past the proverbial 2 funeral minutes, was freedom. I felt like weight was coming off of me and although the weight of the pain of losing a loved one couldn’t be so easily erased, whatever happened up there when I ended that poem and started briefly talking about the man I knew as my grandfather, was exhilarating. It was different. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. What it was exactly, I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint so soon, but the depressed, half suicidal, totally unhappy young 23 year old that resided in me at the time NEEDED it to stay alive. And only time would tell her that.

In the meantime,

I kept rewinding until all those lyrics appeared on my page and even as I did this, I became more connected with the song. I was hearing different parts I hadn’t so intently paid attention to before. I was channeling this second verse and this chorus into my life. The intro portion of the song was what initially drew me into it.

“You know sometimes we ummm, we don't recognize our dreams inside
our reality and uh other times we're not aware of exactly
what's real ya know we walk around day dreaming but the sunshine, the sunshine always is.... “

Our living room was huge. Open. The couches were only a year old and were still in pristine shape. The television was 40 inches, UBER large but perfect for a living room of that size. The patio sliding doors always ushered in bright amounts of light, but I had begun keeping them turned in a way that it blocked out all sunshine. There was no living room table. The couches sat too far apart for it to be cohesive. The walls were slightly bare. There were no end tables. The open space of the living room made for a great dance zone when I was in the mood. But the mood of those days had been consistently sour filled. I was living inside of a big ass open casket.

6850 Brendon Way Drive.
It had become my tomb.

And Myster didn’t like the tomb, so he barely came that way anymore. At this point, my life as I knew it felt like a daily reminder of the worst shit that could ever happen to anyone. And all I wanted was to leave. I was carless, phoneless, jobless. I felt poor, lonely, abandoned. I felt unaccounted for. Like death would be a welcome party that I waited on an invite from. It was difficult. It was hard. But I had not let go of the power of an open mic. I knew I was going, I just didn’t know when or where. But I would have a poem ready for it. And it would be these words, spoken by the Floacist.

I used to depend on your eyes to show me the way that I should go
My reality is blurry I'm afraid of being all alone

My tomb was silently deafening. The alone time, the lack of ability to leave or even call out for help was driving me insane. It felt like forty days of night or maybe solitary confinement. When I would hear him finally turn the key, after days of being missing, a sense of brief relief would come over me. “Maybe he’s coming to take me somewhere.” It never ended up as such. He always left without me. So it was just, my new dog and my tomb of never-ending slow death.

Your light has been my guide throughout the good and bad
I wish that I had spent a little more attention to my one and only sunshine

I had nothing but time on my hands. Nothing but time to think, over think, ponder, go over in my head,etc.……It didn’t take much to realize how many eggs I had put in the basket I thought he and I were weaving together. I put about 3 dozen in there. When it was all said and done, they were all returned to me broken; some without their yolk. I just wanted to go backwards to the day before I ever sat on his lap and let him enter my world.

(Floacist)
Listen, I'd never leave you yo, I sweared on my grave
Damn what's that I'm feeling dizzy kinda getting faint
But it ain't nothing, didn't sleep that much last night
From watching over you but none less I'm cool I'm fine

When he would come home and stay, I would sit up and watch him breathe. I would try to fit my body in the nook of his during the times that he didn’t come home arguing about bullshit. In my mind, as much and as badly as I wanted to leave, I wanted to stay even more. I wanted it to be so simple. That we could grow up together and look backwards on those days and laugh. But too much had happened.

I said I'm feeling fine so back up off me I'm alright
I'm here to see my friends and what's up with that blinding light
Said I don't need to lie down

I don't need your help right now
What's up with all the noises

all the running round
You've got it wrong

I'm not the one who needs the help in here

He would always tell me I needed to get some help from someone. He was thinking more professionally. He thought all the crying I did was funny and at best, a mental problem. What I needed, was for someone to see something in me and help me out. I had no help. I needed someone to say, I love you. I needed someone else because I had exhausted myself trying to provide it for myself day in and day out, but to no avail. I needed convincing that I deserved better than what was happening in my life. But few knew. Outside of the ppl that “assumed” things, no one really knew what was happening in that townhouse. Well, the neighbors knew. The neighbors definitely knew and ironically, one of the neighbors was my ex-boyfriend before I met Myster. His roommate was more concerned with getting in my pants than offering a helping hand….but why should he have??? I would have just said I was ok. As a matter a fact, I did tell him more than once, I was ok.

Yo, what's up with you, you're crying I see tears
Yo, what's going on, don't leave, please don't take her out
Said I don't understand, I'm kinda feeling scared now
I said it's getting hard to breathe

getting hard to see
\I'm not too sure anymore

what's going on with me
Please bring her back

connect me

talk just one more time

I was just lost. All I could do was cry, and cry some more. When I was writing the lyrics to this song down and bracing myself for my debut on the mic, I would cry. I would cry when the music would start, because I knew what she was about to say. And how closely I identified with it. I knew I was sick of this shit. But I had no way out. The lonelies had literally stolen me from me and I sat back and watched. He never noticed that the woman I had become was not even a shell of the woman I used to be. I was nothing more than a nuisance on his eyes and he was nothing more than the person I wanted to show how to love me properly.


But it's too late the last exhale is mine

I never did perform that piece. I ended up writing all of it out, but never did it publically. I was too shy. By the time I had become introduced to the world of open mics, which was only a couple/few months later, I had decided to return with an original piece. I started writing more than I ever had before with the full intent that if I were to perform something, it needed to be mine. At least the first time. I felt like I had something in me to say. My first poem on the mic was called The Conversation. And when I got finished, a rush of emotions quite like the ones from the funeral, had returned. That freedom. I still couldn’t pinpoint what it was at the time. But it would only take a few more graces to the stage before I figured out what it was: Freedom.

A personal freedom unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

My addiction started immediately.

Despite the highs and lows, I have not stopped since. That was 2003.

This is 2013.

Its been ten years.

I’ve experienced a lot, done a lot, been pissed on, pissed off and laughed the entire time. I am no longer that scared, shelled up young woman in search of true love in the wrong closet. I am ten years older. 20 years wiser as compared to. Still without my grandfather and will forever be missing him. And still listening to Sunshine.

It was less than a year before my voice got completely in the speed of the flow of the mic and out 6850. The tombstone. The dead part of me stayed there.

For all I know, she is still around.

But the me that was in there, picking and screaming and kicking to get out, even if it meant thru someone else’s words, has blossomed into someone who won’t dare let another muthafucka silence her or tell her/show her (whether it be by actions/words or subconsciously) what she can and can’t do and/or who she IS or ISNT.

Know that no matter what one may think about me, and I know there are people who think some things…..hell, I think some things about some people, so its only fair…

But know that at the end of it all, I know exactly who I am.

Finally.....the only thing i REALLY want to do besides be an accomplished WRITER, is INSPIRE the hell out of everyone to do whatever it is you want to do....to use the opportunities you have been granted and parlay that into the next step.  To LIVE. ....if i die, having inspired a boatload of people, i will sincerely believe i lived a good life.  If anything i do fails to inspire, i will have wasted a moment, a chance and a prime opportunity.  Believe what you may, but i remember everything that happened in my life pre-jY.  Pre-nsay......and it aint pretty...but its real enough to keep me wanting to INSPIRE.

You may have met me, but i know me.

I am Kendria Travonne “januarieYork” Smith. I used to go by nsaychable, but I outgrew her ass. She still had leftovers from the tomb. As much as I lose, I will win. As much as I win, I will fail. As much as I fail or win, lose or rejoice, I will LIVE…..

I will breathe.

And I will never let anyone take the light from within me again.

I will see my lovely sunshine.

13

 

The last exhale is indeed mine.

jY

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