ceridwen

She bent steadily above a pile of papers
pushing her hair to the side
with the purpose of a child,
wildly attentive
yet paying no attention to detail or importance.
Her glasses slid down her nose and
she squinted above them as if this was the
best way to view her mess
in a blur of black words
on bleached paper.
She did this periodically
but never routine or planned,
she would despise her past so bitterly
that any reminder
even those few precious poems
would sicken her
I cant take these anymore!
she would scream,
and I would nod from behind the wine bottle
pretending to understand her inner drama.
She would spend only ten minutes
ripping or burning all that she wrote
that brought back unwanted feelings
or shamed her with truth
(her own of course,
no one elses made her a bit uncomfortable).
The strange thing was
afterwards there would be an intense silence
as if we had all just witnessed what true artists do
and I would roll my eyes and hope the theatrics were over
because if the others did not respond
the way she desperately needed them to (i.e. poor artistic poetry girl
your pain must eat you alive)
she would give us all a terrible speech
about how she sees the world from the eyes of a goddess
and what a horrible curse this has been for her.
The others wouldnt want to hear it either
so someone would hug her,
recite the same words from last time,
but none of us ever made a move to stop her
from destroying all that she wrote
not because of our deep human understanding
of the process of pain and the need for letting go
but because her poems were crap
and fared better at the bottom of a trash can
than in front of some pretentious coffee shop microphone.