I am privileged I know.
When someone writes L5
Opening their vulnerability to me - to you.
I believe in sharing vulnerability.
Vulnerability is a strength
not a weakness.
It is an ABILITY.
It is SKILL which only comes,
as other skills,
through practice.
Here a great and beautiful human
allows me to use one of her poems - for you.
***
There’s a painting hanging on a wall
in my mind.
A red blond, long haired, dark blue-eyed girl.
She is sitting on a weathered rock, sorrounded by seaweed.
Thin, smart, disciplined, creative.
Perfect and broken.
But in control.
It is an image that was clawed and scratched into being
by fingers, frozen rigid.
So cold she couldn’t untie her own shoelaces.
Afraid to look over her bony shoulder.
Terrified that she might find
vulnerability.
She has been walking for a while.
Now,
there’s a face reflected in a mirror
on my wall.
A dark haired, freckled, dark-blue eyed girl.
Chubby, tired and healthy. Sometimes a little creative.
Imperfect and honest.
Healing and not good enough.
She stares at herself.
It is a blurry image mirrored by the disgust in her face.
And even though she is selfish enough
to own too many beautiful shoes
Not one seems to grant the support she needs
to keep walking.
To find her outline.
Distrust
holds these two images together.
Out of balance, in her world full of faceless men.
Because there was a storm followed by
a gentle push
And they both hurtled forward into the wrong arms.
Cried and ignored the same world full
of warm, solid people waiting to love them.
And they grew isolated.
Dictated by white noise and a seemingly unreachable itch.
A noise that rendered them incapable of completing their own sentences.
I am them.
My scars, my tale.
The comfortable ulcer in which I reside.
They are what keeps me going.
They are what keeps me from going.
That they should paint my future
terrifies me.
Am I that broken?
Am I as broken as this poem?
***
by Mone Celin BHP
