Finding Fortune

This mic is a matchstick, struck to illuminate a revelation too few of us make, and even fewer admit.

I’m lucky.

Like the bullets speeding from the muffled muzzle of this world’s cheat-code handguns always seem to find that bit of skin that scares them off like chasing mercury with a finger.

Like how the majority of my problems are first-world, and those that aren’t still only come in first-world doses.

Like I still find time to complain about trivial shit, but don’t acknowledge the fortune in having someone to listen.

Lucky.

Because any time my luck has turned for a moment, I’ve never been put in a situation I couldn’t survive.

Because I’m allowed more than just surviving.

Because I have a life with honest friends who love me, so even though there ain’t no such thing as a free 

lunch, I can still get some food for thought.

Because I can dissect myself on this stage, hanging my intestines around the mic like tinsel on a tree, and I can feel safe doing it, knowing that I can get past the blood loss – and I wouldn’t have to put myself back together without help.

Because all the world’s a stage, and there is nothing “mere” about being a player upon it.

Because I spent years damning the wall I’d built, locking myself away from honesty, and never took into account that I’ve had access to the brick and mortar from birth.

Because enough people can relate to that, that it’s become cliché.

Because I’m never really alone.

But I’m still afraid to dance where anyone can see.

Still afraid to tell you how I really feel.

Tell you how even the memory of your smile can illuminate the most demon-infested catacombs of my psyche like sunlight actually managing to fill a black hole – that its darkness would swallow no more.

Lucky.

Like it’s not difficult to find the luck in my life. I can see Lucky Charms around every corner before I even get there, like this world spoon-feeds them to me because I eat Lucky Charms for breakfast.

Like finishing dead-last in anything is still leagues ahead of those who chose not, or didn’t get the chance to start in the first place.

So when this world brings the taste of copper to my teeth, when everything I see becomes a fist either poised to strike, or held in solidarity against me, when the chip on my shoulder carries the weight of the world, and I lose the strength to raise my arms in a shield, I can be thankful for the adversity.

Because the damage I’ve taken along the way led me to paths untraveled by my blood’s history.

Like these acid burns are all on the inside of my mouth, and all self-inflicted

Because each sacred scar serves as a reminder of what I can overcome, and the knowledge that has brought me here lives within each sliver of dead tissue like angels squatting in a hostel.