Uncensored

I still remember the moment I forgot to censor myself,

on autopilot,

in a café with a friend,
replying to you, without thinking,

hitting that x key a million times,

pressing send before I engaged my thought process...

then hand over mouth as my friend and I both giggled, wondering what you would think.

We didn’t know each other that well then -

now I do it on purpose, on autopilot or fully in the moment.

And how often is censoring as automatic as the thousand and one xs I put on the end of my messages?

Zipped lips are not my forte;

but I rephrase,

dance around

the issue,

go vague,

go airy fairy,

sometimes anyway.

And it makes me wonder how people lead private lives

because when pressed, I’m just out with it.

How can I skirt or avoid it now?

I’ll just tell you the truth.

I’m a book

completely open,

but still more guarded than anyone would suspect

with a mouth as big as mine.

Because I don’t dare tell you that I love you, you know, platonically of course,

and that would normally trip out of my mouth before I could stop it!

And I don’t want to risk telling him that I don’t like it when he makes out like it never happened,

because I feel rubbed out, like a mistake in pencil.

So I’m censored.

And sometimes,

it’s okay 

to not say

these things outloud.

I wish I’d be that way more often,

like when I got offered a soft mint

And I replied, “I love you.”

Or when the barista in Starbucks asked me how my day was

and I told him exactly how it was;

ignored the yawns in his response
(you’d think someone with access to so much coffee could keep those at bay!)

Maybe it’s just time to admit it all?

After all,

I’m usually all or nothing anyway.

That sometimes I’m confident.

Yet other times I hide in the tinned food aisle of the supermarket when I spot someone I know.

Sometimes I speak twenty words per second, and no-one can keep up.

Sometimes I have nothing to say, so speak twenty words per second to fill the silence.

Sometimes I’d just rather hide away and not be noticed,

but then on my birthday
I want that parade,

that serenade,

all through the day.

So there it is,

today I’m uncensored.

We’ll see about tomorrow...