A Painted Rose
You were perfect, the way you were before But others disagreed and said you should be better You should be thin You should be clean You should be happy You should be as we say. Why did they want us to change? Were they jealous or just closed-minded? Perhaps they were neither. Perhaps they were buried too, deep beneath our feet. You washed yourself in other peoples’ dreams, Became the product of their scorn. Are you still the same person you were? Or are you different, Are you changed? Do you mourn for her, the one you left behind? [Do you mourn as I do?] You have forgotten her, and all her merits You have replaced her with plastic sheets and polystyrene Now you look in shop windows and see in the glass A painted rose that looks so sweet, but has no scent You called yourself a broken thing, a cripple? The bastard child of hateful love, a veteran of many hard fought battles You thought your scars hideous [I thought them beautiful] You tried to scrub and cut them out [While I remembered them.] So many dreams, you had, and not enough life it seemed So you forgot your dreams and stole the dreams of others Called them yours and painted smiles on your face So anyone who looked could see: you were happy with your dreams. And then finally I grew heavy on you A great anchor to yourself, a self you’d rather forget You are thin now You are clean now You are happy now You are exactly as they told you to be. What will happen when they are all gone away? When the only one to love you is you, and you Cannot quite remember who you are to start with. How will you breathe when everything around you is empty space? You will suffocate, and the world will tread softly across your grave And there you will remain, buried beneath other peoples’ dreams.