Excerpt for Of All Things by Michelle Young, available in its entirety at Smashwords





Of All Things


by


Michelle Young



Published by Night Publishing, Smashwords edition


Copyright 2010, Michelle Young


ISBN 978-1-4523-4896-4

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All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is accidental.


To discover other books by Michelle Young, please go to http://www.nightpublishing.com/id38.html.




Of All Things

Love is the Reality.’

(Rumi)


A tiny pink flower

Protrudes from a break

In the crumbling tarmac.

In spite of its fragility,

It has force enough

To be brought into being.

Two days ago it was hidden

And now it is here

Life persists -

Even in the concrete

And breeze-block of decay.


I walk to the end of the street,

Not fully hearing

The tuneless buskers

Not seeing the faces

Of the heaving crowds

To-ing and fro-ing,

Waltzing on to tomorrow.

No time to stop, to look,

To acknowledge we each exist.

We have things to buy,

Convenience food to eat,

Places to flock to -

The great human herd

Driven from shop to shop

In the hope of something more -

A touch, a look, a kind word

To sleep contentedly

To know tenderness

To be held and that is all.


We are all the same.

United in universal yearning,

Each one of us weak,

Devastatingly human,

Believing ourselves

To be different.

Clinging hopelessly

To the notion of uniqueness

We feel alone.

In the pursuit of happiness,

We chase the wrong things –

Vast absences and transient pleasures,

To find in the end,

When these things are spent

That only kindness matters,

Only love endures.



Desire


The caged bird,

Soon grows afraid of freedom.

My fortress

Of unspoken words,

And half-truths,

The barriers designed to protect

Served only to divide me.

I thought there was safety

In my silence,

No regret and no reliance

And I never said the words

But felt them

Stillborn on my lips,

I wanted to tell you.


Our eyes move over

The things we desire.

Each sight of you

Opens an old wound

Cut afresh and bleeding.

There is a scar

That runs the length

And breadth of me

Reminding me

Of what is absent.

I will miss you when I wake.




Khamush


Please don’t doubt,

My heart is beating

Or think me cowardly,

And retreating.

It’s just there are no words,

That have not been said before,

No new way of saying it


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