Cosmic Claws

When I was a teenager I loved writing, after years I am giving it a shot again!

Cosmic Claws

In the beginning, there was a word by my side.
And that word turned into chaos--
or rather an organized mess,
the kind only I can untangle--
with fingers, eyes,
but mostly with a heart and a brain
that bathe in the tear-streaked blood of my aching--
not just wounded, but battered--body.
This body was once small,
then it grew,
until it made mistakes
it now wishes it could scrape off
with a Swiss army knife.
But what if it needed those mistakes?
The need for failure became the key to surviving
a kind of life that only gives.
It never takes.
Truly--nothing.
This life is still shaping itself.
I'm not sure if you want to shape it yourself,
or let it flow--
let the miniature people
who move every cell of your body
do the shaping for you.
Imagine it this way:
we too are tiny people
moving the cells of something larger.
Some are bigger,
some are smaller,
but every miniature gesture
is like a single loop of yarn around a ball
--until that ball becomes a globe,
still spinning,
still the favorite toy of some cosmic cat.
That cat plays with your feelings,
and you say:
"Stop squeezing me so much."
You're all crumpled up--
black fingerprints of expectations
stuck to your skin,
smeared all over.
You shine like coal,
unsure whether you can ever be cleaned.
Do you really want to be written by someone else's lips?
A pen would do a better job
explaining who you are
than those cracked mouths
dipping themselves into coffee
brewed with dread--
the dread that you are not
what they want you to be.
And what do you want to be?
Wait--
do I even care?
I shouldn't.
But I do.
It hurts me
that the tall tiny people
don't light up and relax
at the thought of me--
of my generous
yet all the poorer
spirit spilling out.
Who am I when no one's looking?
But what if someone is looking?
No one's looking!
But what if...?
What if someone sees me
and starts forming judgments--
sensations in their gut?
Do their sacred stomach-twists matter more
than my own honest movements?
But honesty--
honesty only exists
if someone else declares it honest.
The most honest honesty
is the kind seen by as many eyes as possible,
all nodding in unison:
"Yes, that's it.
That's how you should behave.
That's the dream we spun
inside the yarn ball
and sent into the world."
Breaking the loop is hard.
It was hard.
And it will--unquestionably--be hard again.
That is, unless you think it through.
So here's your next mission in this cosmic journey:
How to escape
the (not so) honest stares of alienation
and the cosmic feline claws of destiny.
Because even a tiny person like you
can create something enormous--
even if it ends up
in the corner, in the shadows,
hidden from the eyes
of all those tall, chain-smoking speculators.