Beautiful, Poisonous / Age Before Youth

 I am told I am mature for my age. An old soul in a young body. Almost everyone means it as a compliment except for those rare glimpses when I see understanding and pity. A fictional pity of course, you know how a poet’s mind gets. Languid and knived words spewing from my lips that betray everything my mind holds in rapture. As if a soul and eyes weathered by tricks never meant for kids and lies never meant to harm was something to call beautiful. I am quite captivated with that word, - beautiful - because it can be used to describe lighting as it makes runes and satanic rituals of burnt grass and burning trees; name flowers covered in dew on a cool Indian dawn. I will always know that the compliment comes in two parts with the first being the commonplace, the usual. That we admire your maturity and your adulthood come so early. 

The second one slithers behind, unknown. Beckoning to the apple, but alas, Eve is blind to the frantic gesturing of glittering scales. People never know that they called my trauma beautiful and that it preened every time I thought it gave me my art to exsanguinate the pain. 

I accept it with a smile, always. I’m never offended, just disappointed. Waiting for the person who will eat the apple whole and love me anyway. It is such a difficult thing to be the teacher of your own art, you will always mindlessly agree with their own examinations and the mirrors of themselves they find in some way or the other. I have never minded. To be likened to another is the equivalent of trading books as recommendations and songs as gifts. Each a piece of my heart, just as dear, just as fragile, just as territorial, but you can’t help but gift it to the person who seems to know you so well. A tiring paradox at times, but worthy just the same. 

Just is such a peculiar word. Meaning fair, meaning only, meaning just what it is. A folly of its own.