In a beautiful bundle

Of fresh red roses,

Does anyone notice

The one that is withering?

In a perfect sky

Full of bright, twinkling stars,

Does anyone notice

The one that is barely glimmering?

In a happy school,

Where the children laugh and play,

Does anyone notice

The one that is always left out?

In a full bowl of cereal,

Where the o-shaped cereal floats on the milk,

Does anyone notice

The one misshapen circle?

In a garden,

Where beautiful flowers grow,

Does anyone notice

The one brown clump of dead petals on the ground?

In the writing

Of a perfect student’s paper,

Does anyone notice

The one shaky letter, written by a trembling hand?

In a dazzling smile,

Seemingly full of happiness,

Does anyone notice

The sadness hidden behind it?

The answer is no.

And it will always be no.

Because we believe what we will,

And we want everything to be perfect,

Even if we know

That not everything

Is perfect.

I’m learning that one letter

Can make all the difference;

One letter, or

The lack thereof

Could burn down a dream or

Allow it to flourish;

Imagine what a word

Could do;

What a sentence

Could do, or

A paragraph or an essay or

A collection of them, much like

We call our constitution;

Imagine what one keystroke

Could do, or

The uniting of a million hands as we

Together grip the same pen;

If we could find it in us to

All consider our letters as they

Flow as blood from our hearts

To a page, we

Could write something willing

To be speckled with seeds;

As we learned from the Genesis story, all

It takes is the word; the word

Will become flesh, and the word

will grow into us;

Farmers used to burn down forests

So they could plant new life;

            Quite literally, they

            Encouraged the rising from ashes;

The earth was sprouted from the hand

Of the universe, and

The darkness we blossomed from is

What one could call

                                       Ash-like and bruised.

Bruises heal, but

In their healing they dance like a bird

Through a rainbow, twirling

Through the fading of colors; they

Show progress, and yet

The color never leaks

From by which it is bound; if

It is our words the blood

Of this nation is built from, perhaps

It should not be kept inside, concealed

By the shades of its progress, never spilling

Onto paper;

It should be echoed by a hand and

All the hands that join it

Upon a page;

If we were to poke the bruises

Of our fallen ideals that lay

Well-intentioned but haphazard

Upon tattered pages, not burned but

       Ready to sprout new life,

With the sharpened tip

Of a pencil, we could spill all

The letters we must come to realize

Will make a difference;

Imagine what a single word

Could do if

We all put our hands together

And wrote it 

Into something living and

Full of the letters that bleed

From our hearts;

Imagine.

I'm sorry this is so long, there were a lot of ideas I wanted to fit in here and I got a little greedy with how many connections and metaphors I wanted to use.  If you stuck it out, thank you so much for reading! :)

It is a terrible thing when 

democracy

kindness

peace

is taken away.

I think it must be almost worse when that pain becomes dull a 

Bruise

That won’t go away.

It has been nighttime for so long

That looking for stars is rhythmic 

And sometimes we have a full moon

/more hope

And just like that it’s a new moon

Once again

/gone

And we all carry around flashlights.

but stars can’t guide us forever

And my flashlight is flickering.

there is something about those eyes that kept me chained to this love

for they seemed to be the first that I couldn't see right through

as if rather than a window to your soul

they were a wall. 

they kept me wanting more

kept me chasing you without knowing it

because I simply had to know what you kept behind them

now in your arms,

you tell me things that sound like love

I watch your eyes, 

and the dark depth begins to lighten

but those eyes,

they never let me in. 

I wonder if they ever will. 

releve 

To rise 

glissade 

To glide

allonge 

To stretch 

Reach

Your hands turn away from your body towards the side of the room

Reaching for something that is never there

This was always your step

Because your primary ballet teacher 

Told you it was like a bird

Reach little bird

Try harder little bird

Blood and sweat mixed together

Covered by rhinestones and pink tutus

Moves that you have practiced since you were four

But can never perfect

Always reaching

And yet, 

Someone is still always better than you

And you can’t escape from it

Mirrors surround you 

Your greatest asset, and also your worst nightmare

That distort your vision 

Hours upon hours

Lines that are better than yours

Dancers that grow to the ceiling 

Swallowing you 

Hidden monsters

Grabbing 

And still you keep coming back 

Joy grows in the corners 

Like daffodils breaking through the mud 

Signs of warmer time

The touch of an arm 

The feeling of flying

Sparrows over fields of spring grass

Why do you dance 

Is a question that is often asked

Sometimes you ask yourself that too 

As you tie those shoes 

That feel like bricks on your feet 

And watch the little face

Peering over the side of the white staircase

Entranced in the snaking pink ribbons 

As they wrap their way around your ankle 

And suddenly it’s all worth it

Because that little girl was once you

Watching and dreaming 

Plie

And up 

Arabesque 

Hold longer

Leg higher

And hold

Stretch further 

Reach 

Little bird

What will they think of us?

200 years into our future

Long after our stories have faded,

After our lives' missions have been put to rest,

After our influence has run out,

And our desires forgotten.

After the world becomes unrecognizable,

And its people are just as foreign.

Will they think of us as primitive,

Just not knowing any better?

Will they think of us as their equal,

Doing the same as we are?

Will they pity us,

And our savagery and aggression?

Will they think of us as separate,

Will they be too advanced to even think about us in the same way?

But the possibility that scares me the most;

Will they envy us,

And our times of peace, and simplicity?

Will it get only worse from here?

Is this as good as it can get?

Why do we spend so much of our limited time making the worst of it?

Why do we assume that they can fix what we’ve already broken,

What we ourselves are unable, unwilling to fix?

Why do we think they’ll be able to put our own differences aside, when we haven’t put our ancestors’ behind us?

What will it take for us to move towards a world where they can look back on us in 200 years with pride?

Our time’s legacy being that of redemption,

One of breaking a vicious cycle that we’ve already largely fallen victim to.

I wonder…

Was this future guaranteed?

Are we hopeless in this goal of redemption?

Should we just be happy with what we have?

It can’t hurt to try.

Inside the British Museum, past the Egyptian and Near East artifacts, you will come across a room.  Room 19, to be exact. And in that room, you will encounter several perfectly fine art pieces, but in the middle, there is a statue.

She stands tall, head high and back straight, carrying more than just the weight of her marble body. She is carrying worry, loneliness, and longing. She carries these, but she is not meant to carry them alone. You see, she was not carved from a lone block of marble to stand displaying her story individually, no.

She has sisters. Five of them. For a thousand years they stood, weathering storms, wars, innovations and disease, sharing their load, both physical and emotional- if you believe that statues can feel. They were connected by sisterhood, duty, and stone, until one was wrenched away.

Officially, the obtaining of this sister was legal and fair, under then modern laws made to justify pillaging and greed. She was not stolen, but freely given, many maintain. They say she was free to take as they spent hours chipping at her marble to free her from her position.

And so, she sits alone, crying out for her sisters as they do the same, the distance between them feeling infinitely more present than the millennia they spent close.

Oh my Caryatid, how they have failed you. How they ignore your pain and aching for home, How they dismiss your sister's wishes and silent protests as you sit, alone on that northern island, like an olive tree out of place in a cold, misty moor.

You do not know how much you are missed. You are longed for, fought for, by those who have seen your plight. Your sisters have not forgotten you, Caryatid. They leave a space for you where they stand, stiff and waiting, so you have a place to come home to. you are still loved, even if it is by those a thousand miles away.

Convinced that their democracy 
Is the only democracy 

My brethren fall heavily into the rubble 
A reflection of my own clay, 
A memory of our shared fire. 

I miss the time when 
They were called the creative people. 
The kind people, 
The smart ones. 

Now they are resilient. 
They are brave. 
They are hopeful. 

We forget so often that
They are also human.

We forget
And we keep forgetting.

And who's fault is that?