Insecurity

I adopted people’s words of loathing and took them home with me

I nurtured all the sad because I took it as fact

They planted and took root like oak trees

Not just in my garden but every room of my house

I worked around them as if they were cement road blocks

I climbed over them and twisted through them like an obstacle course

It never occurred to me that I could ask them to leave and they would

That my own words could incinerate them

That though they seemed immobile, they could be reduced to ashes

And blow away in the wind