It’s easier to be a coward than to stand out in pain working to change. But change requires pain, don’t the gainers say?
But cowards have pain too: They pour their drink in a glass like those that stand out in pain working to find a life that flows and goes. For both, the glass sits in the palm of their hand.
The coward squeezes it hard, crushing it as it explodes like a bomb spitting splinters into the life of its holder.
“Well now that there are so many splinters” says the coward. Life is easier to pick at, ick at and kick at. Too many splinters to change my world that has crushed like a glass in my hand.
One at a time, the coward picks at those painful splinters extracting each wonderful moment from life with every pick and pluck; spitting life’s blood.
Lawsuits, deaths durge, being alone. In conflict with a vision in your head, that beats so loudly, it wakes you up in the middle of the night in search of its dawn.
But at that moment the girl with the glass sat there frozen. She took that glass, gripped it firmly into her hand and glunk, glunk, glunk, went its contents that she chugged.
With the glass clenched in her fist, her emotions ran like the raging fire now burning down her throat; remindering her that she was alive by its abrasivness and remembering that she was ready
To Curl Up and Dye;
Her hair that is.
All for her future next best moments.
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3 Comments
I loved this. I have those times too!
I like the sentiment of this poem, but I feel the choice of the word “coward” is unfortunate. The word is a label and a judgement, a summarization of a person by one feeling. Personally, I prefer “fearful” or “afraid”, though they’re not gramatically parallel. All of us are afraid. There are no cowards. Even those who do not follow their dreams are cowards. They are just afraid.
Thanks Mark for your comments. My choice of the word coward was to reflect the shame we feel and the internal name calling we inflict upon ourselves… Lisa
Oops, meant to say “Even those who do not follow their dreams AREN’T cowards.”
The key of course isn’t to be afraid, it’s to choose your response to fear (as opposed to just reacting to it) – a sentiment which your post captures nicely!