THE BULLETS

'When A Label Takes The Stage, Love Becomes The Target'
Original Song Written & Performed by Gaby Montiel

Ever since I understood my own name, I have been wondering who I am.

Am I a child? A musician? A girl? A daughter? A friend, a partner, a sister? Can I be all of these things? I became overwhelmed by the options before me, ripe as peaches in the summer, and I was always greedy for more. I believed that if I collected enough of these words, I would become full of potential and identity. All I ended up with were pockets full of useless words that have nothing to do with anything meaningful. I am a high school student, but that is a role, not who I am. I am a kind person, but I’ve said cruel things when I got upset. Apologies don’t make up for the brief unkindnesses I inflicted. Does that make me a kind person, or just someone who is capable of kindness? Can words, simple qualities or moments in time captured in these fleeting letters, truly represent the deepness and fullness I feel in my existence? I don’t believe they can.

We create labels for everything we do not understand. It is how we control the fear of never leashing what lies outside of our comprehension. We muzzle up the paradoxes, a very label for something unsolvable. We rope together the confusion, the frustration, the objects of our terrible fear of misunderstanding. Of course, the biggest avoidance we make is ourselves being misunderstood. Pick any word you want to define yourself, and you will find endless more. We are rich with labels, fresh for every hand to yank from the Earth and claim. So we become people of roles, of qualities. We are kind. We are independent. We are daughters and sons and lovers and parents. We are what we do for work, what we do within our family, what we do within school. We are defined by every action, every belief, because being misunderstood must be the biggest crime.
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​That is why these labels are the same which are used to hate. To understand what we fear, we must control it first. But we cannot control love. Love cannot be labeled, so therefore, it must be hated.

Labels are how we communicate and connect with each other. However, they are dangerous to our weak backs, so prone to leaning against them for support. We cannot stand on our own without our precious labels, and it is killing our love. It is killing our light.

You are more than a word. You have felt air within your lungs, felt the pulse in your blood. You are the universe itself. You cannot be defined by little letters telling you what your actions mean to the world. You have lived, you are alive. That is who you are. ∎

Another hit and run the bullets never miss
An audience undone, are we running out of hits?
If I love do I earn a badge of participation
Or will you strip, spit, sit me down,
am I a member of this nation?

Am I sick? Is it so strange?
Does the name of my heart scare you?
Did a name extract this hate?

Am I sick? Is it so wrong?
Is a woman in love terrifying
Or is it the volume of her love song?

You fear a kiss
I fear your gun
One leaves honey-tainted lips
One kills a mama’s son

I don’t deserve the emblem
I don’t deserve the state
I’ll throw my heart to the engine
But soul never goes away

I’ll die my lover’s hero
I’ll die this cold man’s fool
I’ll let the bullets burrow
To slick my grave in the cruel

We gave a label a stage and lights
Produced its show
The crowd’s a stable, betting on all the horses
They refuse to know

Am I sick? Is it so weird?
Is my chest disgusting if it
Makes your lust disappear

Am I sick? Can I win?
Does a Lord’s name weigh more
Than the careful gaze of my sin?

I’ll rename all my soul
I’ll cast away my tongue
If it’s what it takes for control
I’ll never speak again

Just give me my love’s warm hold
And I’ll renounce I ever loved at all
I’ll let you rip from my mouth the labels
And I’ll die from my named love’s fall

Another hit and run and the bullets never miss
An audience undone,
Would I rather time or a cold kiss?
The bullets never miss

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@klaudia_dai