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S M Jul 2016
Don't be afraid to walk through fire
Let it burn your clothes
Let it lick your skin
Let it show you the pain within
Don't be afraid to walk through fire
There is an aching in your bones
A burning heart
A burning desire
To bring yourself to home
Maggie Emmett Mar 2016
Miss Haversham has shaken
off the cobwebs and the deadly dust.
tore down the tattered curtains
moth-eaten and frayed
She’s flung open the windows
thrown away the detritus of decay
into the path of passing winds
napery tossed down to the garden.
Even the mice have run for cover
as she tears off the raggedy sheds
of stained satin and be-ribboned lace.

She stands naked in the barren room
Estella has prepared a soothing bath
perfumed rich with oils and fragrant attars
to steal the acris stench of unwashed years
coaxing the arid brittle crust away
saving the soft delicate skin beneath
viciousness, sloughed smooth
and vengeful purpose passes.

She is reborn a Botticelli Venus
standing in an open shell
long hair shining and wrapping around
her creamy skin, voluptuous
curvaceous, slippery with life
newborn yet wiser for the years
of reflection, ready to deflect
romantic nonsense and live
free and breathe again.

© M.L.Emmett
Alternative Stories
Ady Oct 2014
And then it hit me;

it had nothing to do with the fact that I tripped over a rock
fell and scraped my knee, crushed orange leaves and marred
them against me-it'd be tricky to get this off in one wash.

I was caught by an overdue epiphany;

it had been chasing me since the beginning of everything but
I promise it was not the reason I jogged each and every season
back and forth-which I suppose also was metaphorically.

Nothing was going to change;

I got up and brushed my raw hands on my ***** pants,
mud stuck to the heel of them and trickles of sweat fell down and
made everything that much colder-windy city.

If I kept waiting;

my breath came is white puffs, rapid and elevated,
the sun broke through the thin barrier of gray clouds and I swore
just a bit at the state of my ripped pants.

For someone to come and alter it;

my legs were burning at the sudden discontinuity of motion and thus
I got up and stretched once more- my knee was bleeding- inhaled deeply
the scent of crushed leaves and began my journey home.

It was me all along;

Children played,undisturbed by the chilly breezes of Autumn,
they fell and laughed merrily as though falling was just a sanguine
thing to do.

And it wasn't easy, I know;

The wind took the tiny tangerine hats off trees, blowing, howling,
the leaves soared at the mercy of nature's cycle-death and rebirth-
and suddenly my excuse of “what's the point? I'll die anyway.”
seemed petty and amusing.

I needed to change to change things.

A child, unafraid of pain, dove unto a pile of gathered leaves,
disappeared in a midst of orange and red after emerging
flushed and jolly, snickering and snorting. I crossed the road
and reached the door.
And after I let water fall and take away the dirt, a stray leaf had
made its way to my hair and I did not throw it away but kept it
as a reminder of the tumble I took to fall to this conclusion.

Autumn fell unto my world, feathers bright like the plumage of
a Phoenix bird in flight.
True story, of a rather obvious thing I had ignored for a long time.

— The End —