My Dance

I watch them dance the dance designed for me

Bending and moving and loving the moment.

The dance that I was promised

that I longed for.

Like watching with my nose pressed against a glass pane

I long for what I deserve

For what I want.

This dance should be mine.

Each stretch of the arm, each turn of the head was written for me.

This dance was promised to me.

I long to dance.

To feel the freedom of these movements.

These movements that were designed for me - promised to me.

My bag is in hand, my shoes have been wet and broken

All for the sake of this dance.

This dance that is no longer mine.

This dance that once held wonder and magic and mystery in my eyes

Now evokes anger, bitterness, and longing.

Will I ever dance this dance the way I once longed to?

Will that dance be one of joy

Or one of triumph.

I pray the former.

He wrote the dance

Paraded the dance in front of me

Included me in its design.

And now I watch as he changes each piece of it.

I am an afterthought.

Do I even want to dance this dance that was once designed for me

Or was the moment lost?

The Shoe

Wrinkled and worn she sits idly amidst a crowd of her kind.

No price tags to boast or polish to spare.

Those days are long forgotten.

Threadbare soles and tattered laces

None other can boast such wounds.

Her companions tell stories of compliments and successes.

Each one more ostentatious than the next.

And she sits idly admist the crowd of her kind.

With each success, another is forgotten.

With the fading glimmer of gloss and trends each grows more useless than the last.

No use for such antiquated frivelries.

Away they go, those shimmering companions.

Wrinkled and worn she sits idly by.

No stories of glamour or treasures

She has been beaten and bruised and crushed.

Beaten by the rocks of the highest mountain tops

Overlooking lands untold.

Bruised from the leaps she made from shore to shore

And from moments marked by lonely and taskless hand.

Crushed amongst other necessities and unmentionables

As she braved the journey.

Oh but to walk a mile with her.

Wrinkled and worn she sits idly by - the most precious of her kind.

The Longing

The halls are decked

and music plays

yet there she sits, a wordless, hopeless, empty shell.

They congratulate, praise, and welcome

as she gazes through such fleeting moments.

This, too, shall pass.

It always does.

Each moment carries the weight of the world,

Each movement carves a path to greatness.

And so she treads, the wordless, hopeless, empty shell.

A mass with no substance.

Full but unsatisfied.

Busy yet whistful.

The music fades.

The halls are bare.

The books are lost and she is forgotten.

Etchings on the wall tell stories of tenants past.

She has nothing to show for herself

And nothing about her speaks of greatness.

The world sees her as empty, yet she is satisfied at last.

And this is life.

No curtains to guard her from the sun, no task to barakade her freedom run.

She sees herself as she was made.

and She is satisfied.

The Not-So-Gentle Fade

So this is what it’s like

To disappear.

The eyes of the world glazed over by the present haze of life.

The here and now is all that is

While I begin to fade.

My face becomes a blur

My quirks a cold and unfamiliar resume.

I gave you life

My life, that is.

You took my time, my heart, and my wisdom

And I gave it freely – willingly – gladly.

You gave me yours as well

A vault of memories, thoughts, and dreams.

You gave me hope.

And then you gave me pain.

The pain of watching the world as you had let me come to know it

Spin and mold and change without me.

Without needing or wanting the life that I gave.

You were done

Done with me.

I gave you what you wanted.

And I let you.

I let you run.

And I wait.

I watch you leave, my gifts to you in tow.

And here I sit.

And this is what it’s like to disappear in the eyes of the world.

Shouting with all of my might

But unheard.

Always unheard.

I watch you all.

I can see your faces clearly.

But to you I am transparent as time

a fleeting moment.

I will paint you into my memory

Because you have made me who I am.

And yet you run.

So this is what it’s like to be a passing fad….