A Childhood Fear

Scared of the dark. A poem about my life and what I hope I can someday learn from it.

It's been a while

Since I could run my hands

Down my sides 

And know my figure:

Straight and soft and small.

Then the light flickered.

The world went black.

My eyes couldn't adjust

To my change. 

We fear change. 

We fear what we do not know. 

Instead of understanding,

We hate.

I hate. 

I tried to mold my shell

To what was tradition.

But my insides could only take so much,

And so they became jumbled

And angry and weak.

Soon, my outside matched just that--

A sad replica of a porcelain doll.

It sufficed 

It was not enough

You can't wish to sit in a glass case 

High up on a shelf and watch the world

While together want to prance around in flesh feet 

Like a real girl kissing dreams.

Then all my wanting grew,

And my head just couldn't take care of them all.

So they ran into the air

And blindly met cardboard freedom.

I begged who would listen to stay;

I lit a fire and offered them food,

Making them comfortable

Because I  desired

I was scared of nothingness

I wanted nothing at all.

But air has mass,

Always the same no matter the volume.

Change the weight, you change the substance.

With all these thoughts, 

This was no longer air.

This was no longer something 

I knew how to breathe.

Living

Life

Became too dense.

They shipped me off,

A fragile package

Marked 'this side up,'

Carried upside down.

I arrived at the doorsteps of engineers

With  instructions specifying

Which tools to use

And how to rearrange the gears,

How to carefully measure the amounts

And to record each and every number.

But I knew the truth all along;

They can't mend the wears

Or fix the kinks when the whole

Denies the damage.

Ripping away layers of skin

Doesn't' work when what I'm looking for

Has faded into memories.

It wasn't my body I had lost that day

But my intangible self.

So many years spent

Trying squeeze back inside 

A broken shell

When all I needed to fix

Were my eyes. 

And finally, I am realizing 

That what I thought were monsters

Hidden in the dark

Was actually beauty

The monsters told me

Not to see. 

Author's Note

I have issues with line breaks, sorry

Reviews

[The Insanely Vibrant]

The concept is well-analyzed and well-presented. Things that fear, ignorance and ultimately, habit can make a man do are incomprehensible and unpredictable. And you've portrayed them very well indeed. And, my personal opinion is, forget the line breaks. As long as you convey the message as you've done here, you've nothing to really worry about :) I liked it :)

[~ Stefanie ~]

I didn't see any problem with line breaks in this :) Your writing is unique to your own style. That is what makes it enjoyable to read. This was very well-written and very well described. I enjoyed reading! You did a very great job.

[Courtney]

that is really good and its ok some authors use line breaks