Processing

paint by emotion

Words paint a picture, hopefully the one that is  attempting to be placed on a canvas.
Memories of these images can twist and fade as they are often want with the wisps of emotions swirled in their hazy coil*. A phrase, however, can illuminate what was once dark.

The addege "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt" is moronic and reductive*. All can find it hard to agree that the heart is so casually assumed to bounce back from a verbal beating, negating the power emotions drive through the body. What is missing, that the addage forgets, is the value placed on the person those words are peddled* out of. Even moreso is the knowledge that they, too, find words to wield the power for change.

Let's break down what can occur:
A dagger of pain and rejection* feels plunged purposefully through the core of a fragmented and delicate soul. At this point one of two options are laid bare: feel the emotion or file away on the bookshelf* for another day. All can agree; from alcoholics to poets, veterans and mothers*, pain of emotional hailstorms knock what feels left of the human that once was.

However, let the perspective shift what is being held - a short burst of untethered* intensity in the moment it cries to be heard. Now, this geyser is  replaced by a deep, building ache within the very core. The bookshelf has grown in its populous. A fountain* of pages shoved into glass* prisons, only for it to be admired and occasionally interacted with. Only this fountain is fed through many channels. Some emotions are small drops, pointed and glaring, but delicate enough to dissapate with a kiss away. Others are a torrential downpour of agony that line the shelves, next to the items that have given both such joy and ache.

To write is to paint - it is to show the world something eyes alone cannot grasp. The heart has the capacity for emotion ones own brain* does not possess. Yet the imagination is all too often distorted through the lens of pain and distrust. Thus the words so delicately placed upon the paper shelf paint the image in clearer view of the ways you* keep yourself on that bookshelf as well.