To Be Broken Is To Be Honest - Collaboration with Wesley C.

TO BE BROKEN IS TO BE HONEST

The sand is a warm window;
from the sill,
     I watch skiffs in the distance sail away from me.
Sea opens to self-sought solitude.

That one day, distant lands became familiar playground
     for children of men, cruelly joined in time and place,
     by dice thrown into air, dimpled cubes with my name
     and theirs.

I hear those children laugh in their sunny day, ice cream innocence.
Their language a sound from once familiar foreign land.

I stand in pain, refuse the hand that asks
     to help
And wonder:
     if to be a child
     is to be honest,
     am I blind
     to their askance stares? With each step will I
     leave behind their glares?

As I lift my head from my feet, with eyes toward the sea, my scars
     are only reflections of the footprints they perceive to be as me:
Lines in the flesh-colored sand,
     wilted under uneven sea edges, remainder of the battle of separation.
     Craters, crimson petals blemished in the glass sun.
     A lonely pursuit.
     A sand rose's stigmata on my chest.
     Silence polished on my window reflection.

Yet I gleam, my back to a windowless beach:

With each day's dusk,
     we all fracture,
     light decays

     myriad aspects

     etched experiences

To be broken
     is to be honest.

***

© 2017 Darren White and Wesley C. of  "The Poetry Brigade of Wayward Flowers"