Dear My Stupid Mouth
a letter to a sticky song
Dear My Stupid Mouth ( a song by John Mayer),
Lately you are never far from my thoughts. Even at 4 am your words seem to be around every folded corner of my gray matter. Indelible line and no filter getting caught in the squishy grooves, and I don’t even know where captain backfire thinks it’s going.
But you’ve always been a favorite song. I forever see a window into an awkward moment. I said too much again. That window of napkin fiddling and cringe-y games of chess with the salt and pepper shakers is not just mistakes, another social casualty, but a place to be seen.
You mention needing a filter and fair, maybe that’s true, but for me this song has always been about being misunderstood.
Too often a filter, for me, means making myself more palatable for someone else. Sometimes it’s not letting some of me out, sometimes it’s hiding something completely.
Me, redacted.
And even then the perception is not up to us. We can rearrange ourselves and then they can rearrange our rearranged selves and ta-da, found poetry.
A paper version of you.
Maybe every now and then it isn’t your stupid mouth–it’s their stupid perception.
Maybe they just didn’t find you well.
Maybe I try too hard. Yeah I feel that too.
Until next time (but maybe not 4am),
Coleen