I hide my pretty words
inside a shell.
Safe and far away from
prying eyes –
thoughts and desires, carefully constructed
to never see the light of day, never feel
the warmth of human connection.
For this is all too raw,
too fragile.
Words painfully crafted –
containing the chaos inside.
If people only knew,
what I was hiding,
I’d have to tear open my body,
remove the pearl
for all to see.
My flesh exposed – consumed,
my core, paraded around necks.
And I’d be tossed away
into the waters of my suffering,
to create more precious gems.
At the end, when I am too tired for it all,
clutched by the fingers of grief,
all that shall be left of me –
a shell, forced to adorn
the walls of strangers’ homes.
Just as so many mother of pearls,
who’ve came before me.
I wrote this poem while thinking about artists like Amy Winehouse and Sylvia Plath, who crafted beautiful, personal work that captivated people—often at the cost of their own suffering. The public’s fascination with their pain, especially after their untimely deaths, is a sad reminder of how art and suffering are so often intertwined. To quote Oscar Wilde: "The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."
