Another exceptional piece by Candice! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 🙂

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June 14, 2021 The Feathered Sleep

All those little malices

By all means ignore me

or dissect me

it seems a parody of contrasts

is my lot

the interplay of intensity and nothingness

for you who climb out of the woodwork and carve my freedom on your belt

you who look away after one glance and do not consult your back mirror

the gaze of this world exhausts me

I want to wade into the deeps and swim off

away from the noise of competition, egos, alarm clocks and paleo diets

to something resembling peace

then

that fissured part of my soul

fractured by time, strife and the religion of need

surfaces breathless

and sighting land, swims back

filled with a longing to be heard, touched, ratified

by those mercuried, humid hands of humans

the lovers, the haters, the players

I can’t pretend to keep up

I am tired beyond my years

trying to understand what makes people break others

why our penchant for destruction, lying and vilifying

is the healthiest hothouse flower of them all

as much as I want to climb inside silence and stay still

my ear pressed to a shell

listening to a fantasy world

I know now, as I am no longer a child

that wonderlust is only for the very young

who inhabit it with such unbridled glee

that we adults stop what we are doing, however important

and watch with indulgent smiles;

as wet and laughing

they dash through sprinklers

shouting

“The dragon got you! Get to the Faraway Tree!”

in that moment, I wish we could recall

what potion we drank to enable us to believe

such kind places ever existed

where, like glossy rubber boots we left at the doorway

all those little malices would fall off

and not muddy the floor