What do you see?
Do you see the struggles,
The jealousy?
Do you see the darkness,
That engulfs my soul?
The joy and the freedom
That illness has stole?
Do you see the pain, and
Decaying life?
The murderous cells,
Multiplying and rife?
Or do you see,
The skin and hair,
The fake smiles,
Without a care?
The tinny laugh, and
Tired eyes,
Excused by work
And other lies?
The walking legs
And typing hands,
That make you believe
That my life is grand?
Well let me tell you,
Whatever you see,
Is more about you
And less about me.
I'll tell you a secret,
You would never guess...
I may look normal,
But inside I'm a mess!
My body is rebelling,
Fighting an constant internal war,
And there's nothing I can do,
‘cept beg and pray and implore.
See, when you see me,
You'd never know,
That underneath my clothes,
I'm purely a shadow.
I really felt this, Michelle, and the questions made me feel uncomfortable, made me try to put myself in the speaker’s shoes. I like the tentative feel and rhythm of the short lines, and the rhyme. There is a line that could be improved by omitting one word, to sustain the rhythm: I would change ‘that illness has stole’ (which should grammatically be ‘stolen’) to ‘That illness stole’. Something that would also make it aesthetically more pleasing would be to avoid starting every line with a capital letter. A couple of erroneous commas jarred a bit, which could change to:
ReplyDelete‘Do you see the darkness
that engulfs my soul?’
‘Do you see the pain
and decaying life?’