You wouldn't know this about me, but I crack my knuckles when I'm nervous.

I crack my knuckles a lot.

I find myself increasingly unable to smile properly. Don't ask me how that works. I just feel sometimes that my face is the most uncomfortable part of my body, because it's the part that everyone can see in full.

Sometimes it doesn't know which expression to make

I believe i'm just now learning what it means to be a man.

And no, I don't mean playing sports, or driving an expensive car, or paying bills, or walking around shirtless in a Gillette commercial or a Twilight movie. 

I mean smiling, all by myself, alone in a car.

For no reason other than it's morning, I'm headed to work, the roads are empty and the chilly sky is filled with light.

I spend most of my time trying to find a way to get out of my own head. Because If I don't I'll talk myself to death, and suffocate all my self-worth under the weight of my own words. 

 So I fill up as much of my time as I can with music, and the screeching voices from the inside pair up with the ones being piped in from the outside, and depending on the day they'll either do a waltz...

or get in a fistfight. 

And sometimes, when I'm lucky, my brain remembers one of those songs while I sleep, and the lyrics, when heard through the soft, golden membrane of sleep,  hum and resonate in my brain, and become ten times what they were when I was awake. These alien notes then follow me throughout the day, and echo whenever I hear a song or a word that reminds me of their strange, foreign beauty.