You want to make something beautiful.
You try on your many hats-
Can you make art that stirs hearts to syncopated fluid intake?
Can you sing songs that lift the diaphragm?
Can you move in a dance that will bring your audience’s tear ducts to full production?
But you are not good at those things.
And you are not patient- here’s where it gets difficult.
You are not patient, so you move on.
You pull more hats from the closet.
You want to make something beautiful, so you save lives
In safety features for automated factories,
In the stitch of a needle through shredded flesh,
In the measure of a brace in a new office building
But you are too good at those things.
You want to feel like you’ve made something beautiful
Not just looking back, but as you make it
The stroke of a brush forming the curve of a lover’s cheek
The curl of the final bracket in a series of nested loops
The flex of your shoulderblades and press into the pillows
Everyone wants to make something beautiful,
In blood, in sweat, in paint
In lyric and code, in ink and tears
They want to have made something extraordinary by the time they die
So they can say they did, so it wasn’t a waste, so it just
So it was, and is, and could be forever.