Nobody knows this little Rose --
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
Only a Bee will miss it --
Only a Butterfly,
Hastening from far journey --
On its breast to lie --
Only a Bird will wonder --
Only a Breeze will sigh --
Ah Little Rose -- how easy
For such as thee to die!

Emily Dickinson

Thursday 15 April 2010

Reflections on a 16 year old self

What did I know, didn't I know, didn't I feel?
Little woman, with her hair all cut off
Naive and waiting for love and for pain,
You sold your curls for the sake of a father,
Sold your innocence for the arms of a boy.

Sitting in your life, with a pen writing sorrows,
Writing sins, hoping for life to create the
fairy horrors that you wove, craving bittersweetness
to make a woman of your milk and honeyed flesh
And what did you become?

Why did no one tell you the danger you treasured,
lay in a chest, too brittle to be loved
Crack it and lose the doll inside the dollfaced child
you had been. Then your mind was a weapon,
Now it is the note you leave behind

Growing taller, clasping the chinks in the wall
But the world grew too. Eye to eye with trouble,
the conflicts you revelled with carry you,
You, in your red red shoes, dancing,
to the heartbeat that's three years long

So, as the lock hits the floor, tears.
Pillar the eyes to the heart, to the feet
And salt on the skin, stops the drum.
Silence is all you possess. Tacet.
The dancer must stand alone.