Raven’s Wing Poetry

This was written for this week’s Three Word Wednesday prompt. This week’s words are: indifferent, pour, and reason. I decided to do free verse this time. WARNING: This is also one of my more bitter and angry poems. If you are not in the mood to read, I suggest you come back another day. If you’re not scared, read on.

-Nicole

—————————————–
If you wonder why I’m indifferent
to your attempts at kindness or love,
then I’ll be glad to give you a reason –

you disconnected.

You went off into your own little world,
leaving me to fend for myself in a house
where I was:

one more burden,
one more mouth to feed,
one more expense, and
one more worry.

I learned to live in the shadows,
and I still retreat there sometimes,
wrapping them like a cloak around me

so that no one will see me,
no one will notice me, and
no one will hurt me.

I can become invisible instantly now,
a fraction of myself reduced down
to just the common denominator of being human –

but I’m afraid that one day I will become so
invisible that I will never reappear in flesh
to rejoin this vibrant, mad world.

I leave
behind these leaves,
these poems,
these raven feathers
to make sure that just in
case I do disappear, that I have left
something worthwhile behind,
something to let the world know that I was here.

Do you think that I can just forget how
I was asked to disappear, how I was broken
apart, melted, and then poured into
the mold of a perfect young girl with:
gleaming white teeth that always lined a smile,
rivers of straight-A only report cards,
and a blank clean slate of innocence
with never a dirty thought or deed?

And then you – you try to pour me
into the mold
of a woman without tragedy, trauma, or drama.

You can’t handle my darkness.
You can’t handle the reminder
of how I am now forever scarred.
You should be thankful that
I wear these scars in my heart and that
I didn’t decide to carve them into my
caramel skin in the language of desperation and pain –
screams of wordless bloody slashes that
the whole world could see.

I scream in poetry, and
I scream in art,
because I was once forbidden
to scream.

You will never understand my screams;

so f*** off
and go find the
fragrant, flower, fairy fantasies
you desire without me.

Written 7/2/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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