Morning.

Your straight edge sadness
cuts the world in two
and though I move forward,
my eyes flick backwards:
seconds, minutes, hours
days, weeks, months
years...

(decades).

Nineteen Ninety Three.
(the beginning of teenage hell)
the world at large, through
the hand of a stranger,
tried to impose Tori Amos
upon me.

And though I listened and loved,
I suppressed the hunger
to break out, and wallowed
in viscous conformity.

But still, I was outer,
longing to be inner
as I traced the edges
of another microcosm -
chin thrust to the ground,
crown saluting the sun.

Two Thousand and Two
November eighteenth -
eleven months before today.
The world collapsed
and swallowed my soul.
But staring at the broken body
of my source of fearlessness,
I stopped circling.

Stillness
Regret
Sadness
Reaction & Redemption Replacing Repetition

Two Thousand and Three
I swim in the sounds
of a girl on the outside,
getting drunk on treasure
quasi-undiscovered in these parts.

Now,
I only travel in straight lines
with your words in my head
and smile in my memory,
because you could be
anyone and everything;
and I have found escape
in the truth of self
(goodbye to other).

10/18/2003

Author's Note: There are a million moments between 1993 and 2002 - some of them undoubtedly more important than the ones I've chosen. But I suppose I didn't really choose these thoughts today - they chose me. Life/art is like that.

Posted on 10/19/2003
Copyright © 2025 Karen Michelle