Whimsy

In honor of National Poetry Month, I thought I’d share something with you guys. I don’t write a ton of poetry anymore, just every once in awhile when the mood strikes. And I scrap most of them for being terrible, but this one has a special place in my heart. It's sort of an elegy for childhood.

I’ve never actually shared any of my poetry before outside of a classroom setting, so you guys should feel… scared? Click away now while you still can!

Welp. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Here goes.

Whimsy

A little pixie I drew that I thought complimented Whimsy

you were the sunlight

serenading a gray thicket from broken bits of blue

and I was fraying ends of yarn, held in place with dripping glue

you were made of something stronger

nettles, thorns, and earth, and something else I couldn’t touch

you were riddled starlight –

starbright beyond the weeping willow

and I, wishing to the window, braving

the eight-fingered witch and her silk-spun cauldron

slurping blood from the morning’s game

you were the braided wreath

of dandelion gathered in a field

of weeds, and when I was done

there were burrs on my clothes

and you were those

you were a ballad, a legend

I sang to the worms when the earth was too wet to breathe

you were my bow, strung with shoelace

and the arrow that pricked my pointer

for one hundred years of hapless dreams

mostly you were my shadow

a gray stain sometimes at my feet

in the thickest shade you drifted, probing

the night, coiling wicked shapes across the walls

it was a long time before I saw the peacock

and by then you were already changing.

I don’t know you as I once did

you are altered beyond recognition

to what end is irrelevant, for there is no way back

no matter how many conjured stars

that is the way of these things

yet still, you are