I’m restless and some strange sort of angry

Like hunger but prickly, a sort of peachfuzz from the wrong direction sort of thing
I feel the way the shag carpet looks when you run fingers to show the rough side,
rather than the smooth.

There are barbs under my skin, and words in my throat, and rage in my blood
and I’ve been taught,
trained,
conditioned
to keep quiet about such things for so long
that I don’t know how to find the middle ground here.

This is bigger picture stuff,
Mum would never condone our silence,
She taught us to speak proud,
use the voices we’d been given

But she couldn’t be everywhere,
and the filters found their way in.
I’ve been running filters on filters for so long that I don’t know where to start.
I don’t know where I start.
I know that if I tear at the mesh,
I’ll be tearing at me.

If that’s what it takes to find my voice,
I suppose that’s how it has to be.

This will take some patience.
Sifting through the tangle to find my way.
Now’s as good a time as any to start, I suppose.

Brace yourself,
this might hurt a bit.