she, the sky

I wrote this piece about my recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder, thanks to some wonderful psychologists and the Dialectical Behaviour Therapy treatment that was offered to me.

she, the sky,
unfurls shadows
tendrils of cloud telling stories
too often left untold-

piercing together all the little signs
(like the flick of a switch, and black or white, and the chasing them away only to call them back, and aching-needing-begging-denying, and fast-paced minds that race on ahead running their own little marathons leaving you
lost
somewhere in the middle
with no real track left to follow).

changeable, she is the fickle Melbourne sun,
her influence equal parts cruelty and kindness
(or so it seems when you push and pull),
the wind of change dancing through your moods
and your rebellion inspires a bitter entanglement-
harsh need and desperate fear
(who are you, you
who daily bathes the waters of guilt,
who are you
to deserve anything at all?)

and so under her caress, both
stern and forgiving
all at once,
under her guidance you bend and wave and
bow to the strain

while elsewhere
another butterfly
flaps in the chaos;

another bit of change-
you're bent just that little further
than you ever considered possible
yet somehow,
even as you wait for it,
you never quite
break

Author's Note

All polite/relevant reviews are welcome - including constructive critique, grammar and spelling corrections. (Poem deliberately left uncapitalised and minimally punctuated.) And thank you for reading/leaving a review!