Work In Progress

Erase the thoughts that began it all;
dim the lights that flashed as guidance.
Cut excuses from wrinkled paper,
paste them to the scrapbook,
a collection.
Snip anger from a patchwork heart -
steal the fog from the air as I breathe.
Blow coal dust from lungs trimmed with diamonds,
run off of the path that was lined with gold

into a blockade of stuttering thoughts.
Shred the canvas whose paint-doused brush has
damned light to live beneath
a cracked layer of black.
Kill the shadows sewn to my feet,
blindfold my conscience and
send me to war with the pen and the pad.
Bend iron bars erected to imprison
curious eyes sunken into eternally-eager faces.

Wash caked blood from delicate hands.
Remove vanity from the lips of oppressors,
join hands to form a finger-woven barricade
against the sharp blow of our brutal reality.
Use a broken compass as guidance
towards everlasting divinity.

Recipient: Little Rita

I dreamed to be here my whole life, since I can remember. I worked myself to death to get to the point where I was confident enough to audition. And I finally made it. Now, however, it feels like I don't want to be here anymore, and that hurts a lot. When what you've worked for literally your whole life feels like it has no meaning to you anymore, it kills a little piece of you inside. It killed the little girl inside of me. She had big dreams for me; she more than anyone else. She did all the work to get the future half of herself to where she knew she had to be. Now, I feel like I'm destroying the path that she paved with my own selfish decisions, and I am so sorry. I can't tell her that I"m going to change overnight, but I hope she knows I'm trying. From now on, what I do, I'm not doing it for me. I'm not doing it to pacify my mother, I"m not doing it to satisfy my teachers or my mentors; I'm doing it for her. She deserves to look at me now and know that she struggled and bled, but it wasn't in vain. This is for her.