Poetry Archive

Hardness

Who hardened you like this?
Thickets of “protection” fortified around your heart
“Protect you from what?” I ask
The emptiness in your eyes replied in place of the silence of your lips
Resting and waning
The tide pulls back viciously
Draining the earth around it
You give and you take your love away
Stow-away for “safekeeping”
Closed down so good even you couldn’t find yourself
I’d like to believe there was once a spark where your fingertips grazed the curves of life’s edges
A glisten in your eye when you spoke life into the ears of the universe
Hope in your heart where now hollowness pervades
Because to feel nothing is better than to ache
I said “What did they take away?”
But I meant “What did they leave you with?”
A fragment of your own reckoning
Without the whisper of desire to put yourself back together again
And for what?
Time to be filled with emptiness
As vapid as the distractions that divide meaning from the meaningless
Hope from the hopefulness
Empty as the empty nest that sings in the wind’s limbs
“What have they done to you?”
But I meant “What have you chose to live with?”


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Filed under: Poetry Archive

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Kemi Ducasse is a Writer and Artist that believes in the power of Art to alchemize emotions for deep-healing and self-discovery. Writing is the first form of creating that essentially gave her a voice and a place to belong. In her work, she engages ancestral and familial wounds, relationships, emotions, being embodied, and introspective self-examination. Currently, her practice has broadened in medium to include exploration through textile, sculpture, and other artisan practices. Kemi is of Haitian roots, from Miami, Florida and currently living in Los Angeles, California.