The Edges

I do not know from where this broken thing within me reigns ...why I seem to find such intense beauty in sadness or why I am lulled by the subtle storms I sing. And I am always amazed when others do not get it...when they cannot see every complete and separate world inside a single tear or drop of rain...and as I try to share with them the enormous depth of the discoveries ive made it only serves to set a mark upon my head...a gigantic question mark that grows with every “raised eyebrow”...every “oh my” and every “tsk-tsk-tsk”.. They told me I was too sad and I was much too rough around the edges..they said it was dangerous to entertain such thoughts and practices and to covet my sadness in this way and if only I would conform to society and take a pill I could be normal make it all go away ...so they set about in a scurry to present me with a kaleidescopic assortment ...a brightly colored selection of answers to swallow down with a paper cup of water...they told me it would smooth out all those rough edges....so I did as I was told I swallowed like a good girl said "pitty please" and "mother may I"  until my edges were as smooth as pewter ...and also just as dull...I no longer found such intense beauty in sadness in fact I really no longer found such intense beauty in anything...not that I found ugliness either...it was more like shades of vanilla...gone were the days of chocolate and strawberry only to be replaced by this endless, everlasting, gawd-forsaken Vanilla while I watched from a distance as my sadness became nothing more than a frozen tundra..."oh but isnt this so much better?, they said, “Now that my edges were all smoothed out?”... because it seemed to be such a bad thing, those edges... those pesky edges cropping up from nowhere seemingly for no other purpose than to render me flawed...different...politically incorrect and socially unacceptable" Those edges that, at times, were so sharp I would cut myself on them , yet they gave me the reassurance that I could still bleed...that I was still alive. Those edges that determined within me my favorite songs and kept the pen in my writers hand moving fluidly .It was in those edges that I would find myself however flawed or dangerous those edges uncovered me and kept me from being anyone else...anyone other than who I was.. I had moved and breathed inside of those edges and now I was loosing myself beneath an invisible cloak of obedience, conformity and medication...sanding them away a little more each day until the edges were all but gone ..along with my ability to shine and bleed...I was disappearing in plain sight... falling down a smooth rabbit hole where there were no longer any edges left to grab onto and haul myself back up. I dont remember exactly where the marker occurred in my life to make me realize that loosing my edges would ultimately mean the loss of myself but I began the uphill ascent of reclaiming those edges much the same way that I had lost them gradually and then suddenly but it wasnt until the dawning of my self acceptance that I truly began to shine and still there is a long way to go but I am learning to embrace my edges however sharp they might be and Im learning to love the things about myself that make me odd and separate me from the rest. We are all such beautiful and multi-faceted beings like the sun crystals hanging in the window each of us so different but It is our edges that bend the light and create the prisms casting the beautiful colors upon the wall.

© DannyLynne Riley

Reviews

[roarke]

Some of the most intense writing I've read. I do not say that lightly.
Edges, contours, the defining of the outside shapes and postures. But in this piece it is clearly evident that the edges are over run, over flowed with the inside, the essence, the entity soul.

This piece is tight, coherent, yet expresses the freedom of self, the intense excitement of discovery and life adventure.
This testifies that after a difficult struggle, light, life and the power it imbues the discoverer with is a sweet, deserved reward for the effort.
Wonderful write.