Do you consider yourself a masterpiece?
Because you know,
We live in a world where it’s easy to feel like a stick
figure scribbled on scrap paper
With stubby, broken crayons,
That not even a child will pick up because the colors just
aren’t
“Pretty enough.”
Because somehow,
We’ve all fallen captive to the presupposition
That the “best art” has to be made out of the “best stuff,”
And that only an intricate physique painted delicately on
a sterile white canvas
With paint so pungent, and so bright that its pigments have
to be diluted with water
Is worthy of being plastered onto the walls that we build
To detain, to disdain, to disguise, and to deprive ourselves
Of the universe that lies beyond the interior
Because we’ve decided that no one out there in the vastness
Would stand up at an auction and scream over the hushed
murmur of the other bidders
Just to hold us in their soft hands and whisper
“Mine.”
But then, I look at you,
And I realize,
We’re wrong.
Because you, my dear
Are the best art,
The kind of masterpiece that deserves to be on exhibition
under the fluorescent lights of an uptown gallery,
To be admired by the glimmering gazes of passersby,
Who stand in awe of the way the colors run together in all
the right places brushstroke by brilliant brushstroke,
And to finally be bought at a price of nothing less than a
thousand gold coins
Of love and gentleness,
To be emblazoned above the crackling embers of a warm
fireplace,
In a home with transparent walls
In a universe of your very own.
But yet somewhere in the blurred lines between
Beauty and brokenness,
I’ve lost sight of what the “best stuff”
Really is, and I’m honestly not sure that I know anymore,
But I do know that whatever you’re made of is pretty
spectacular,
Like the shimmering dust of the earth that glistens on your
bare feet,
And the splendid sunshine that brings out the streaks in
your hair,
And the way your soft voice breaks the earsplitting silence,
And the music that exudes from your sympathetic soul.
And maybe you’re made of some things that you like to
conceal,
To confine to the sketches crumpled up under your bed
because you didn’t want to call them art,
Like the scar you got when you stepped on a rock while
trying to dance in a thunderstorm,
And the icy rain that falls from your eyes and sometimes
blurs your vision when you drive,
And the way you still wake up with cold sweat in the middle
of the night because you could never quite kill the monsters in the
closet,
And the shards of glass, sitting in your soul, that the
music couldn’t replace when the world handed you heartbreak.
But I don’t care if it isn’t always the “best stuff,” or the
“brightest paint,”
Fight through the cobwebs festering under your bed, take out
those sketches,
And tattoo those flaws on your sun-kissed skin,
Because you, my darling,
Are fearfully, and wonderfully made,
Knitted together with the silvery threads of
Beauty and brokenness,
Woven into the greatest mess of a masterpiece,
The kind that isn’t yet complete.
And so if you’re ever asked to draw a self-portrait
And you scribble a stick figure on scrap paper
With stubby, broken crayons
That come in colors you just don’t think are
"Pretty enough,”
Then I will proudly plaster it over the cracks in my crumbling walls,
But then I will sit down at my cluttered desk and write you
a poem to say
“You are so much more.”
You are so much more than the person the world will make you out to be, and you better not forget it.
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