To Bloom as a Butterfly

Storywriter

Storywriter

When I was younger

I’d sit at the corner,

where concrete met the soft soil of our drive,

stare at blades of grass;

and count its blows as the wind past.

What my father would tell me

as he sat close, would be simple:

yet somehow still needed to be pressed into my skin,

layered over twice, thrice,

like wrinkles.  

“Love,” he’d say, hand painting the air,

“You see that there?

That is where I’ll dare you to go.

Dare you to learn to know.”

Looking up to him,

through my hats sweaty brim,

I’d shine my eyes through his yellow teeth,

and try to make them bright again.

Looking down to me,

eyes filled with glee,

he’d reach in his pocket and pull out a large potpourri.

Filled with candies

and covered with stains of coffee,

his pockets never had a sense of vacancy.

But to me,

It was a cheap, silver painted pen

That meant the most then.

Placing it on my flimsy capris,

he’d start off.

before I would even know

he was already gone.

I realized later on, he was doing nothing more than playing along.

But at least, I hoped…

this pen wasn’t also a con.

 “Take this pen, and write!”

I’d recite,

Every

Single

Night.

All as a young kid.

and as I aged,

and filled through every page,

I bleed through the paper,

Like milk through wafers.

I learned, with my pen,

There isn’t really an end,

Unless you say when.

When that will be,

I’ll never know.

But I’ll continue to dare,

and continue to go.

Cause if I don’t

Then what am I to be?

Surely not under the hot sun

stuck under this tree.

But if you ask me

what goals I see,

with this pen

a storywriter seems fit to me.