Imprinted
by Andrea Michelle
~~~
Copyright © 2015 by Andrea Michelle
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Published in the United States of America
First Published, 2015
Andrea Michelle
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Get a second book of poetry for free!
Imprinted
If I could,
I would bottle your laugh
and drink it
so that the feeling you give me
would forever live inside.
Of all the people I've lost,
I miss the most,
the gentle spirit I used to be.
We are still the same in body,
but your heart and mine live apart.
You see,
I only miss you when my anger sparks,
igniting off an insult meant to light fire.
You would have been calm,
I know this,
and it makes me miss you.
I only miss you when I judge,
for you loved people for their frailty,
and I live behind a wall of pride,
blind to the story behind the faults.
I only miss you when I fail you.
When I act like we never met.
I only miss you when I lose you,
for it is when you are gone
that I am lost.
This world is divided
between feelers and thinkers.
Spirits and minds.
Have you ever seen a storm roll in?
That's the way she loved.
A drop or two to start.
Then the flood.
I'm so tired of your games
and yet
it's that devilish grin that keeps me awake at night.
You needn't consume every opinion
placed before you.
do you eat it?
The world is broken
there's no doubt of that.
But she saw the art of each
uniquely shaped shard
and that made all the difference.
Stay away.
Do not paint me in shades of love
and claim me your masterpiece.
I am not one to be hung on a wall,
chained and imprisoned
by affection and adoration.
You believe me a rose
but you are mistaken.
I am the wind
and I will steal away your beauty
as the wind often does of dandelions.
And when I am done you will feel as a weed.
With a final kiss I will travel on.
My love,
I do not want to strip you bare.
They say
I color outside the lines,
I think outside the box,
I challenge the status quo.
But I disagree.
You see,
one can only push the limits
if one is faced with them.
Lines and cages and norms.
To many, are obstacles.
To me, are but words.
I live as free flowing color,
a dripping of paint,
destined to stain the soul of the earth.
Place a hand over your chest.
Feel that?
That's called purpose.
She had a very cross look about her.
So, I asked what was wrong.
“Everything. Everything's wrong.
And it's the fairy tales to blame.
Good beats evil.
Happily ever after.
The world so desperately claims to be
a princess, a knight, a hero.
A good guy.
But I've seen inside myself
and I'm none of these things.
But I look at the villains.
The villains who made mistakes
then hated themselves for it.
The villains who know what it's like
to lose themselves.
The villains who are angry and bitter and desperate,
the results of fractured dreams and slaughtered hopes.
No one bothers with the 'why?'
They think, 'They must have been born evil.'
But they weren't.
And I know.
Because I wasn't either.”
She breathed.
And we sat there.
Two villains holding hands.
I am the hero.
I am the monster.
You are not safe as long as I live.
You will never be saved if ever I die.
So, what is better?
To live with the pain of my demons?
Or to live with the pain of my absence?
And was it the Dragon or the Savior
who pulled you into this live?
And though we plead
for a love that will leave us whole,
we secretly ache for someone
to destroy us so deeply
we cannot help but shine.
We live to be broken,
to unearth the jewels buried inside.
What is art?
Art is a form of communication,
a language, you see.
It is a physical, visual representation of
a word, a story, a feeling.
To those who babble on,
“That's not art!”
Are those who do not speak the language of the artist.
If I spoke to you in Latin,
you may not understand,
and yet,
a language it remains.
You see, the only qualifier of art is that
at least one other
must understand its intention.
Even when I wasn't
I chose to be.
And thus, my life I molded.
She was so intense,
a veil that covered my vision,
demanding attention,
blurring the world like an eruption of steam
after fire and ice brush fingertips.
Indeed,
she was fire and she was ice.
An untameable mass of energy that
burned its name in my flesh.
Yet,
a northern wind that stilled my st
orms,
encased me in ice,
beautiful how she arose every pore on my being.
She was fire.
She was ice.
And I.
I was ready to burn, either way.
She said,
“When I was young, they asked me
what I wanted to be when I grew up.”
He said,
“And what did you say?”
“Some days a doctor, some days a teacher.”
Then silence filled the gap between their lips.
The kind of silence that whispered memories,
smelled of change,
a passing from one self to another.
“Wand now? What do you want to be now?”
He questioned.
“Kind. And good. And happy.
I don't really think anything else matters.”
Don't listen to those who name you
“unrealistic”
in efforts to stunt you from your dreams.
Reality is created within the mind
and thus different for each.
That word,
“unrealistic”,
quivering on their lips,
is but a declaration of their own fear.
Perhaps your reality is greater than theirs.
Perhaps, they should've dreamed harder.
In that fleeting moment before slumber overpowers,
I know a world that is both reality and dream.
Where my mind plays fantastical games
and my heart recognizes their oddities.
Where worry and doubt are but words in a book.
Where, perhaps, this wonderland could be touched.
It is in that moment
where hope is conceived,
created instantly as the unrestrained mind makes love to the sensible heart.
It is in that moment where I live.
Neither asleep nor awake,
entirely romantic yet
utterly realistic.
All those with magic in their fingertips
have always been cast into flame.
Maybe the world isn't burning.
Maybe the world is just fine.
Maybe it's the people who walk around,
delicate as paper,
holding matches and destroying their own selves.
And in our pile of ash we scoff at all
the burning bodies,
as if our flame is less destructive than theirs.
We make love to our demons
and wonder why the world gives birth to shadow.
She much preferred the world within her skull
to the one before her feet.
She lived beneath the pages of a story,
between the heartbeats of a song.
Her eyes were globes amid a galaxy held together
by fantastical chaos.
Wherever she was, it wasn't here.
Humanity saw her as stone.
She saw humanity as a collection of letters
scattered upon a page,
nonsensical and quite boring indeed.
My favorite place to be was close to her.
Close enough that I could
count the freckles on her nose,
a gentle sprinkle of stars upon her
milky complexion.
And I've never