No More

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Awareness, Belief, Communication, creative, faith, hope, loss, Love, Mental health, No More, Prose, Realisation, Self-awareness, Short, Social, story, Understanding, Words, writing

I think that I have come, at last, to a crossroads; a point of uncomfortable realisation. A crossroads which leads, in every direction, to a dead end and a realisation that I have finally reached the last page of my own, personal dictionary. I have come to the point where I have used – and abused – every word that was ever known to me. I have twisted and contorted them into myriad sentences and phrases until all meaning that they might have once held has been lost, all connection to anything other than themselves distorted. As I sent each one on its way, safely wrapped as it was, like a child in a winter coat, cosseted by others to which it bore no relation, I watched it drift away. I watched as they gathered and then dispersed high, high above my head, dipping behind the clouds, never to reappear.

And, eventually, as I reached my hand deep into myself to take hold of another random collection of letters, I found nothing between my fingers, nothing within my grasp. My fist was filled with the emptiness of silence, the silence of a stilling heart.

And then the empty words within my head, the final ones that would leave me, spelled out their message: there was no more to say.

The Wrong Story

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Acceptance, Communication, creative, Falling Sleet, inspiration, loss, Love, poems, poetry, The Wrong Story, Understanding, verse, writing

It was the wrong story that leapt up and out at me,

From the page that I saw behind your eyes –

Its tumbling words sang to me as if I were the one,

The only one to whom they spoke.

They wrapped themselves around me like a Winter’s evening shawl,

A warmth and comfort my insides craved,

A tale unpicked for me.

And as my mind began to weave and tangle a missive in which to grow,

My eyes closed blind to those I saw and

Nurtured futures fruitless.

I turned and spread each leaf before me reflecting as I did,

On every word that I planted there,

And every root that you pushed deep.

And only when the stems had grown and twisted every one,

About and through my aching frame,

Did my eyes, at last, loose their lustre –

And only then did I recognise that,

The story I had read was wrong.

Change

Tags

Acceptance, age, Awareness, Change, creative, faith, Prose, Self, Truth, Understanding, writing

Nothing really changes. The hair may dull, the step become slower; the skin grow thinner and the eyes fade – but nothing really changes. We can give credence to the lie that we are growing wiser, becoming more astute, becoming who we were always meant to be by twisting and bending the truth; by being selective in what we choose to hear – but nothing really changes. We cloak age with words like ‘maturity’ and ‘sophistication’, explain away the lines as ‘experience’ and ‘wisdom’ – but nothing really changes. We are who we were born to be – the child, the youth, the adult, packaged and wrapped like the gift that we were meant to be, each layer removed, revealing more of what we always were; what we will always be. Nothing really changes. We can stare into the mirror, hopeful of seeing a different reflection, an image of an idol, but we are our own gods – the truth lies only within our  own eyes. The only ‘change’ that we ever need is the acceptance of who we truly are.