Disclaimer: This poem features disturbing imagery. Please read at your own discretion.

They say strength is relative,

Subject to change under the gaze of each eye.

They say strength is multifaceted,

Like broken reflections off crystals in the light.

They say I am weak,

Too easy to cry, too sensitive to words, too afraid of any lie.

They say I jump at shadows, twisted and ephemeral,

Ashamed of the thin manifestations of the mind.

Now they say nothing, a blissful breeze of silence.

A thorny rose vine scrapes at my arms, pretty but deadly

Tears of dark red blood well up at each cry

But I, like them, say nothing.

They say that I'm strong.

I see whispered gazes of envy.

I see false smiles and hear barbed words.

I see people prodding at me in morbid curiosity.

But I can't help but wonder.

Do they see me?

Do they see my empty tears, now leaking red from cuts?

Do they see the bruises veiled by the body?

Do they know of my silent agony, obscured by exhaustion?

Like the rose vine, their ideals are only pretty,

Their ideals in reality are full of thorns,

Tearing out the soul.

They battered me thin,

Torn out my guts,

Laughed at my cries,

Scorned at my tears,

And I smiled.

And they told me,

"Finally, you are strong."

I only agreed,

What else can I do?

Anything that rebelled was too cut up,

Anything that longed freedom was too chained down.

I am only but a puppet trapped in rose vines and prisons of knives.

I am strong. 

******

Venting. But artistically :)