Walk Away

Here I stand.

With my heart and everything that I am

In my hands.

In front of you,

Bare.

Shadows and scars for you to judge. And I’ll just leave it all

At your feet, all that’s left of me.

A bag of bones and an aching heart,

And I’ll leave that too because what use is it to me now.

And I’ll walk away, walk away.        

With nothing left of me

I’ll walk away, walk away now and I won’t

Look back at what I used to be.

What you have of me.

You have all of me.

I won’t call, won’t ask how you’re doing.

And I hope you won’t too.

Because I already know if you do,

I won’t lie like I used to.

You have all of me now. I won’t ask for it back.

I’ll just pray that you’ll be gentle with it as I walk away.

I'll just pray that you'll know how sorry I am as I walk away.

I’ll walk away, leave you be, and I’ll try not to look back.

Katie Makkai - Pretty

"“You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing. But you, will never be merely 'pretty'.” "

Powerful, honest and true.

Hourglass

Streaks staining threads. Dirt dusting soles. I watch as she plays in the sandbox. Building sandcastles and knocking them down. Up, down, up, down. She chuckles as she knocks them over, laughs as she builds them again; never giving up in rebuilding her fortress. But now she is digging. Digging and searching for something only she knows. Or maybe she is burying something, hiding a toy she will later find as buried treasure. She lives in her world of saturated colours and cuddles, paying no attention to the outside.

There is no room for sleep or bath time in her doll house. No time to waste in braiding hair at her tea parties. There are new friends to meet, new things to learn. She lets me tuck her in at night only so that the next day will come quicker.

Streaks staining threads. Dirt dusting soles. She drags herself home, painfully aware of the outside. Saturated colours melt into grey as days pass into weeks into months into years. I watch as she grows older, no longer lost in her own world but lost in herself. There is now time for sleep but no room in her mind for rest. Time for baths but no hope of being clean. She collapses each night so that the day will end and fights the morning so the day doesn’t have to start.

Every sunrise that comes brings a moment of remembrance. Crimson, navy, indigo and ochre covering a canvas of beige. Ebony and slate washing out minutes of hours of days.

I see her toeing the sandbox where she used to play and upsets the sand. Pink pops out. It is her doll; doe-eyed and rosy. A reminder of her saturated colours and cuddles but covered in dirt and sand. She picks her doll up, smooths out her ringlets and her doll gazes back at her. Her doll has not aged in years and she thinks that ignorance pays for immortality. She lets go and her dolly falls down, down back to the ground where other left over toys and half-built sandcastles lie.

Streaks staining threads. Dirt dusting soles. I watch her as she turns away, not bothering to rebuild her crumbling sandcastle.

The Sun Never Says

Even
after
all this time
the sun never says to the earth,

“You owe me.”

Look
what happens
with a love like that–

it lights
the whole world.

– Hafiz

My Future... heh

What do you do with a B.A. in English
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge
Have earned me this useless degree
I can’t pay the bills yet
'Cause I have no skills yet
The world is a big scary place
But somehow I can’t shake
The feeling I might make
A difference, to the human race.
- Avenue Q

unedited Coffee

The warm aroma fills my nose
like the afternoon sun on my back
after a cold morning,
like a bear hug in a sad situation,
a surprise gift on an ordinary occasion
or a hot shower after a long, freezing day.
It spreads through my body like
hot tea filling my stomach, like weightlessness,
like a call from home in an empty,
lonely city. It's like a scarf
against the chill, a familiar
laugh of someone loved,
a thick blanket around me in front
of the TV.
Like seeing a baby's first smile,
like endless nights out with best friends,
like coming home after a long time away,
like curling up in front of a fireplace alone
in the middle of winter with a cup of coffee,
the warm aroma filling my nose.

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We had to do an exercise today in Creative Writing modelled off Michael Ondaatje's poem 'Sweet Like A Crow' about a specific noise, smell or taste that we'd experienced. This was what I came up with, done in about half an hour. I was sleepy and I hadn't had a coffee in a while.