Tasting Poison

You don't think she's the type of girl to wake up and scream at herself in the mirror. To wait until she's alone to start talking to herself, lips dripping venom with every word. When she was younger, she trashed everyone who even looked at her, staring them down and daring them to say something - anything. 

Now, she's course corrected, turning her jargon back on herself, pulling out the flaws others won't tell her to her face. She scrutinizes herself in the mirror, picking at every flaw, every imperfection in her skin, as if in belief it reveals a deeper part of who she is. If she nips this in the bud now, maybe it can stop the corruption of her soul, right? 

Does she believe herself unworthy? Sure. She used to, at least. 

Now she just looks around in disdain, viewing others as unworthy of the delight she has. 

Her prayers and actions contradict. She says she wants to love her neighbor then tears her sister apart. She's torn up by grief and dismay, attempting to build a version of herself where the world isn't quite so hard to keep up with. Where she's got the maturity to build her own case and manage it. To be friends with people when no one else is watching. 

But she's got a bad habit of forgetting people exist when they're not there. Something has to remind her. Otherwise, the only time she reaches out is when she has a story she wants to tell. 

She hates herself for the barbed wire her words cut themselves apart on. She hates that they aren't nearly as sharp as they used to be. She's trapped between the sickening poison she used to sip daily and the glimmering nectar fed to her by friends and pastors. 

She's afraid to probe deeply into her faith for fear she will lose it. She doesn't want to spend hours every day worried about the darkness in her heart, so she ignores it. 

So in the darkness of her mind, she watches the light play with her hair, bouncing it back and forth with every breeze. She examines the heart of gold others say she has, messing with the flowers in the fields and hoping for another opportunity to see something come to life. 

She's looking for rest in minor moments, making the most of these dwindling dog days of summer just begun. 

The hard-won moments redeemed from the past seem all but lost in the face of the new ones. So she's attempting to hold on to past and present, present and future. Trying to carry everything, painting new canvases over the old instead of stripping the walls bare. 

But painting over old wounds doesn't heal them. 

Still they drip, like the poison from her tongue, but with sweeping motions, she picks them up and brushes over with fresh paint.