Hello and welcome to my series called Word Not World Series, an episodical poetry anthology inspired by the words you requested from a picture I posted on my Instagram story. The most recent installment featured this beautiful picture below:
(Artist unknown, not my artwork)
Choice
You chose to eat the silence
perched at the top of the landing
as I gnawed on the marrow of quiet
stomaching the last words you would ever say to me,
“Feast your eyes on this.”
*
Duality
They say that I am the carbon copy of you.
that they are confused about who they are really talking to
unless we break our curse by turning our head or certain way,
or fluttering our eyes when we lie.
To which I say, with my teeth gritted as you would grit your teeth,
“Yes, we are cut from the same cloth, but when I was altering myself
he snagged on my fragility,
tearing the fibers of my being
and stamped a patch over top.
Because his father had done that to him,
and he thought a man looked good
with torn clothes,
with scars.”
Scars are a portal to the past,
windows to the mind,
and I am tired of trying to look out at the future and having my vision obscured by fragments.
Stitch me together,
make me different,
swatches taken from the days I splashed in puddles,
that time I rode my bike without training wheels,
the night I met my wife,
dye me in the dawn of our wedding day
because that color looks better on me
than the shades of your sorry self.
Make me into a quilt,
so I can show them that a broken man is not a finished one,
they do not walk the world condemned,
but hand in hand,
with the ones that made them whole again.
*
Thank you so much for tuning into this installment of Word Not World Series. Every installment is held on Saturday via my Instagram (@enis.st.sparrow) story. If you are interested, request your own word for me to write for. Until then, thank you and good night!