Bubble Wrap

There once was a girl
Who felt like a rubber band
Stretched in every which way until she�d snap.
She was sick of living with the same cr@p
And it would all echo in her head.
She would tell it to stop, but it would stay
Like the songs that at one time or another were always in her head.

Her thoughts were never silent.
Always backed by the tune of a song
Or even just an opening
Or a chorus
Or a bridge
Or a rift
That she had been mouthing along to earlier that day.
But she really loved to sing
And she was pretty good too,
But she usually pretended she wasn�t
Because it was funnier that way
And that was only when she wasn�t being told to shut up,
Which was rare
So nobody knew.

She did talk a lot.
And she laughed at herself to make other people feel better about themselves.
But when it came down to it,
No one ever heard her voice
And they never heard her words
They�d say she talked the most and said the least
But it was really that she thought the most
And she only shared what she thought was safe.

She was smarter than most people thought
She wasn�t as ignorant as she looked either.
She was never in her own world, as people constantly told her she was
She realized that she really didn�t have her own world
She was just at the beginning of a very long lease.

People asked her how she was always so happy.
So she would simply say, �Am I? I must be a very good actress then.�
Then she�d smile at them
And they would stand there,
Trying to unscramble what she had just said
And when they did, they would think nothing of it and forget.

Her friends tell her she thinks like a guy.
Keeping her emotions to herself.
But she knows they don�t need to care.
So she confides in people she barely knows,
Or barely knew.
That way they see her for who she is
Not who she only seems to be.

She thought of herself as bubble wrap
Well, all that knew her called her bubbly
Which made the metaphor all too similar to count.
But that wasn�t it
She�d grown this sturdy, solid, stable, shiny, squishy shell
And it kept people from getting to know who she really was
She figured they wouldn�t want to
And she was too scared of getting hurt to find out.

She was addicted to caffeine
Not that she grew shaky
Or was ever too groggy to function
But it helped her keep her shell intact.
Creating more and more bubbles
Like the foam of the lattés she so effortlessly downed
While others quickly felt the buzz,
She just waited for the bubbles
Until she was covered
And smothered
And they hovered
Creating this ridiculous armor that she could never shed.

It�s not that she was always lying.
She really was loud and spastic,
Excited and happy,
Energetic and expressive,
But sometimes it�s hard to see anything else
In a person like that girl.
But that was all she wanted.

Still she dressed in bright hues
Reds, Yellows
Electric blues.
Purples, greens
And orange pants.
And she HATED pastels.
But some days
She had a strange longing
For the whites and the blacks
To come out of the cracks
Just so that she wouldn�t get stuck
In the same rainbow rut.

And sometimes
Only once in a while
She wished her shell would just
POP!
So then all of this bullshit would stop
And then people wouldn�t bother her
Whenever she didn�t feel like talking.
And they wouldn�t yell at her
When she decided to be human for once.

Until then, she stays
Stretched from end to end
Song stuck in her head
Getting her fix
With long slow sips
Atop her rainbow
Covered in her think coat of bubble wrap.