(About a 3 minute read)
The snow came today and the cold,
The cold came with it so hard
It cut through the walls of my cottage.
But nothing today came colder
Than the news someone once
Had laid you on a white table
And under harsh and glaring lights
Stole your insides with a scalpel
To leave you only with your skin.
I am not a stranger to such things.
I have seen in my life how a man,
A man who can walk into a fire
And live to walk out again,
Can someday be taken up by a tornado
And without reason spun so hard his very self —
Everything that he is — is flung from him,
Cast by the winds so far away
That the man must travel decades
To find a few pieces of who he is again.
And I have seen how a woman
Whose spirit is light and tender,
Whose smile is a warm sun,
And whose laughter is a light breeze across flowers,
Can without warning or reason or mercy
Have molten lead poured into her,
Poured down into her to settle and freeze in her heart
By the man who professes to love her.
By the man
Who professes
To love her.
I am not a stranger to such things.
I am not shocked by the news today.
I did not cry for you when I heard
Of the table or the lights or the scalpel.
I did not cry for you
When I heard once again of the monsters among us —
Of what they had worked upon someone —
And I do not yet know you well enough
To mourn true and honest
Your pain, and your suffering, and your alienation:
I’d be BSing you if I said I could.
But you told your story
With such power and grace,
You told it with such insight
And with such understanding,
That you grabbed my guts
You chilled my blood,
You made the thought of you being abused
Rush through my mind like the broken ice
That crashes down a mountain stream
In the winter.
You can turn words on a lathe, my friend,
Turn them with precision and grace.
You can craft them
Into real and solid things
That punch with images,
Meanings, truths, and insights —
That punch.
There’s something great in you,
A seed at least.
I see it.
Do you?
If not for yourself,
Then for the sake of others,
Take care of yourself:
The world is better
That you’re in it.
Take care of yourself.
This is a very powerful piece. I couldn’t help but hold my breath throughout almost the entire poem.
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I cannot think of a better compliment than that a poem makes someone hold their breath. Thank you so much.
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I do want to mention the coincidence between the last line “take care of yourself” because of the context in the poem I am currently writing.
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Now and I am so curious to see your poem when it’s completed!
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I can’t stop reading this. It’s like every time, its meaning never falters in the slightest, and the words never lose what makes them settle so deep inside of you when read. Mind if I print this?
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Not at all. I’m honored. Print away!
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Thank you 🙂
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Like Marysa, I held my breath reading this. So few words packaging enormous emotions have left me a riot of emotions. Yet the final one is a smile. I hope this isn’t real but if it is, I hope she knows too.
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Thank you so much, Chryaliss! That is an exceptional compliment.
The poem is indeed real — all the people in it are based solid on real people. The young poet is 16 and has just published her first book of poems. She is, by the way, Marysa. Today, she email me a poem of hers, and it just gripped me. It was such a precise, striking, and articulate analysis of being abused.
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There are some amazing young people out there – creative, sensitive, inspiring, having survived the worst imaginable things in their young lives. Marysa sounds like one of them. Your poem gripped me too – I was waiting to find out if it was based on reality. Well captured.
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Thank you! I so agree with you about how talented some young people are. I worry a bit because so many talented people become self-destructive. Drugs, alcohol, etc. I hope Marysa doesn’t go that route, and I don’t think she will. I do believe if she sticks with it, there’s no limit to what that young lady might do.
I’m thinking of deviously trying to trick Jane into taking some role in Marysa’s development as a poet — assuming Marysa is receptive to that. Jane in my opinion is as good as any poet on the net — at least by what I’ve seen — if not better.
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I agree – Jane is brilliant. Whether she has the capacity to take on a mentorship is a different matter. May be good for her. But she has had a horrid time of late and has not even been able to post a lot herself
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I saw her mention of that on her blog. It was concerning. Is she pulling through?
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