Unexpected Beauty

 

Brilliant orange,

the color of a summer sunset,

petals delicately folding outward,

 

falling, curling,

 

like a myriad of color

carelessly sprayed from a painter’s brush.

There is red as well,

crushed velvet,

scintillating scarlet,

and hues of yellow,

touches of tangerine,

a perfect bouquet,

complimentary, quietly fantastic.

 

Even in their state of disarray,

lying across the table,

deep cherry wood,

lacquered to a brilliant finish,

water pooling,

 

standing, dripping,

 

one might think

they were placed there purposely,

a statement made;

freedom despite their cut stalks.

 

Still, the vase, the French antique

bought by your mother in Paris,

lovingly cradled, carried thousands of miles,

an offering given as a token of our union,

to sit, gleaming in our dining room,

is shattered in perfect pieces;

a mosaic of chaos.

 

I stand transfixed, unable to move,

shocked by the beauty,

of flowers, water, pieces of colored glass,

momentarily forgetting

the pain that fashioned such unexpected beauty.

 

Your voice, tense and afraid;

my words, salt on a wound that I created,

and the darkness of living alone,

an ominously black cloud,

 

looming, growing,

 

holding back the rain, until I can manage,

to say that I no longer love you as I did,

that I never loved you as I should have.

 

You stand now, drenched and cold,

alone inside your head,

tripping over thoughts,

trying to understand.

 

Water drips, the only sound,

save your labored breathing.

I could tell you that I’m sorry,

gather up the pieces of what I’ve broken,

try to put you back together,

calm you with my talents,

speak to you softly,

draw you away from the inevitable,

but in the end, the only thing we’d have,

is a cracked vase, temporarily held together,

by the sticky glue of lies;

a vase that would never again hold

such perfectly composed beauty.

Reviews

[Legion]

loving cradled - did you mean lovingly cradled? Doesn't sound right if not.

This is such a tragic piece of what can be lost in a relationship. I love the comparison of lies and glue holding it all together. Wonderfully penned. Kudos.

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Wow...heavy...

Parallelism is something that is particularly beautiful and meaningful in poetry, or just in literature of any kind for that matter, and I think you convey meaning using parallelism quite nicely. Not only in the image that you employ but the color that you include. It' creates beauty and romance even in a poem's meaning as fundamentally somber as this one is. I think it's quite interesting how you take what's ugly, or unpleasing to the mind, and make it beautiful somehow.

Simply stated: I like this poem. =) You are truly a gem...of a poet. ; )