Release Me
I am breaking format, this piece did not start out as prose. I jumped straight to lyric writing because that is what came to me.
Verse 1
I learned to live behind the bars
Polished silver, dressed like art
Wings stitched shut with golden thread
Pretty prison, porcelain
I made a home of holding breath
Turned my silence into depth
Every wound in symmetry
Nobody gets all of me
Chorus
Release me
Like your hands know
Exactly where to
Undo me slow
Release me
Don’t try to save me
Just stay and trace me
Till I let go
Release me
Stay in the silence
Feel how the violence
Melts into skin
Release me
Under the surface
Touch what is hurting
Deep within
Release me
Don’t try to hold me
Just get below me
Where I still stand
Release me
Open the fingers
Tight as they linger
Around my own hands
Release me
Verse 2
Verse 1
I learned to live behind the bars
Polished silver, dressed like art
Wings stitched shut with golden thread
Pretty prison, porcelain
I made a home of holding breath
Turned my silence into depth
Every wound in symmetry
Nobody gets all of me
Chorus
Release me
Like your hands know
Exactly where to
Undo me slow
Release me
Don’t try to save me
Just stay and trace me
Till I let go
Release me
Stay in the silence
Feel how the violence
Melts into skin
Release me
Under the surface
Touch what is hurting
Deep within
Release me
Don’t try to hold me
Just get below me
Where I still stand
Release me
Open the fingers
Tight as they linger
Around my own hands
Release me
Verse 2
I don’t want to be your shelter
I don’t want to be the cure
I want to spill across your shoulders
Uncomposed and insecure
Let my aura hit the floor
Let the careful version burn
If you’re steady when I fracture
Maybe I can finally return
Chorus
Release me
Like your hands know
Exactly where to
Undo me slow
Release me
Don’t try to save me
Just stay and trace me
Till I let go
Release me
Stay in the silence
Feel how the violence
Melts into skin
Release me
Under the surface
Touch what is hurting
Deep within
Release me
Let the careful version burn
If you’re steady when I fracture
Maybe I can finally return
Chorus
Release me
Like your hands know
Exactly where to
Undo me slow
Release me
Don’t try to save me
Just stay and trace me
Till I let go
Release me
Stay in the silence
Feel how the violence
Melts into skin
Release me
Under the surface
Touch what is hurting
Deep within
Release me
This piece reimagined as a song using Suno (lyrics are mine).
Author’s Note:
Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared in pieces that something significant has happened in my life. It has been heavy and complicated, and honestly, very difficult to process. I’ve been surrounded by people during this time, but in many ways I have felt deeply alone in what I am actually carrying.
There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes when the thing you are dealing with feels too large, too personal, or too complicated to explain fully. People care. They try to help. They offer advice, solutions, or sympathy. But sometimes what you need isn’t a solution. Sometimes you don’t need to be saved.
You just need someone to sit with you in it.
One of the things that has been especially hard during all of this is the expectation that I will still carry the emotions of other people too. That I will still sit with them in their feelings, comfort them, and help them process what they’re experiencing about the situation, even while I’m struggling just to carry my own.
It’s a strange place to be in when you feel like you’re barely holding things together, but you’re still the person others look to for steadiness.
That was the thought that kept returning to me. The wish that someone could simply witness what I’m holding without trying to fix it, or rush me through it. Not to feel sorry for me. Not to solve anything. Just to be there while I lay it all down.
I started writing what became this piece without any intention of it being a lyric or a poem. I wasn’t trying to write anything at all, really. I was just trying to put words around the feeling of wanting to be released from the loneliness of carrying something so heavy by myself.
Somewhere in the middle of that process, it naturally became a lyric.
What the song is asking for isn’t a savior. It’s a witness. Someone who will sit with the truth of what I’m feeling without judgment, without making me feel like I am a burden, and without the pressure to offer advice or solutions.
Sometimes the deepest kind of relief isn’t rescue.
It’s simply being allowed to release everything you’re holding while someone stays present long enough for you not to carry it alone.
*Don’t worry, everything’s still free.
I’ve just decided to treat my writing a little more like busking.
There’s a tip jar out now,
you can donate if something I’ve written ever stuck with you,
but there’s zero pressure.
Honestly, even better than donations?
Restacks. Shares. Comments.
That’s the currency that keeps the cage alive.
From the cage,
Canary Vale 🪶
Poemsbycanary@gmail.com