[poetry] you give me a rose

suppose they gave roses for suffering well:

suppose it was better the less they could tell,

how long you could hold your head right till you fell —

if they bottled that merit to put up and sell?

well, i’d be the richest chick up on the pitch!

the happiest corpse in the roomiest ditch,

decked out in the showiest medical kitsch

so long as the bulk doesn’t pull at a stitch.

oh, they’d tell me that i’d be made up as a saint.

they’d have chapels to raise and high ceilings to paint

for the martyr whose ultimate sacred restraint

is so tragically cool, so romantic and quaint.

now at one point, they’d tell me, i’d have to be dead.

and it’d have to be something i did or i said.

so i’d grimace, i’d ask — could i never leave bed?

could that vanishing take up the dying instead?

but they would say no, we keep that for the sick.

the candles who burned and left nothing but wick.

they’d say, don’t forget, girl, your dreams are alive.

the ones that we worship have already died.

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This one comes from my remarkable colleagues in the Narrative Working Group at #MEAction, who shared the writing prompt Suppose. 

I think writing prompts are one of the hardest and most revealing tools to craft and wield as a facilitator. What ignites a person’s creative spirit is different for everyone! You can create a prompt with a certain outcome in mind, and then your writers can astonish you with an angle or interpretation you never would have come to on your own. Prompts give us a view into thought patterns, priorities, biases — all kinds of wonderful facets that can help us better understand our peers.

I hope to continue tackling my lot with good humor and good-enough meter.

– ♡