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An ode to shapes

written by: Alexa Cleasby

@Lexicon_Fuse

In the negative spaces there is a quiet honesty. Surrounding all the tangible and hidden in all the places no one thinks to look.

My life is made of shapes. My fingers creep the edges. They sneak back to touch again. I’ll stare until there’s nothing left but shapes. Just a collection of reluctantly beautiful bruised jarring shapes carrying their universe. A burst of selfish colour and chances and choices and I’m powerless. I’m struck still to stone.

I skim and press the lines where it hurts.

I’ll know this shape.

I’ll visit and revisit.

I’ll pinch and pull.

I’ll light a fire and flinch every time that it burns.

I’ll hide in the angles, measuring madness.

I won’t let it rest until I’ve touched every part and met every corner.

I’ll count the sides and I’ll swim in the volume.

I’ll indulge in the agony until I’m ready to leave.

An exquisite unique shape that’s somehow always the same. I welcome it inside and I draw for a while.

And we talk of tigers. Of colours and codes and patterns and poems. Of our insides and our outsides and all the shapes in between.

And then the sun blasts through.

Or sometimes gently it rips the seams with shining claws. It fills me up until all my shapes are brimming and brilliant. It leaves life scrubbed raw and I’ll remember an unbearable trek for water. I’ll remember an intolerable place.

When all is straightened and stripped, it is then that I see. Morning light blossoms luxuriously through my window and time is mine to play. I can stretch, smile and snooze. I break like a spark and inside I am whole. I see past all the shapes to the negative spaces.

The place I forgot to look.

And in this fresh clean space the honesty shyly finds me and leads me home.