I’m Sorry We Can’t Be Friends
(I want this single spaced with stanzas but am not jumping through the hoops properly. Never could follow directions. To the woman who said my poetry would be better if I worked on my format? Bite Me)
Beauty is skin deep, but shame
is a soot that seeps into your soul.
Silent, sinister secret, sequestered.
Beauty can’t mirror shame, and
shame has no ability to comprehend
her, so friendliness is near impossible.
Shame cowers and hides, but cornered
and provoked, attempts a false bravado;
convincing to most, but the shameful
see the sham.
Beauty has nothing to hide, tries to engage
shame, out of great compassion (shame has
a deep respect for beauty, coupled with a
bottomless unworthiness).
Shame wants desperately to be loved, but
can’t and won’t admit it. Feels so inferior
to beauty, she can’t look her in the eye.
Beauty sees shame’s woundedness and
offers love, and shame is touched yet
saddened, knowing she must refuse it.
LBM 12/6/2022
(Wrote this poem before going off the grid (computer unhooked, downstairs toilet leak, long story, new carpet, sweet, very sweet, new toilet sitting in box still waiting. 21 weeks who’s counting?) Scraping the very bottom of the barrel, here. It’s a state that’s so unfamiliar to me now, I can’t imagine it but spent a good 20+ years there. Shame is so highly toxic and corrosive, it’s been the worst, for me. It targets who you *are*, not what you do or don’t, like guilt.
