Let her out

TheFeatheredSleep


The wax in your wane

Needle on smooth track

A song from twenty years back

When you didn’t have

The holes you have now

Crocheting skin with doubt

When you just threw yourself open

Dancing in a crowd with long wick

Breasts high, chin tight, feet on tiptoe

The candle lasted all through night 

And we spilled, like red polinated seeds

Out into dark city streets

Bra straps, cyclist legs, powdered glee

It’s not the bravado of youth 

But the absence of ghosts

Keeps us free

***

I am you 

I am the flicker of past who asks

What did you do with your true self?

Packaged up in trepidation so soft

Lulled yourself to sleepwalking 

Years passed like finger on fast forward

Before you know 

Almost

On the cusp of memory

A girl with an open smile

Running towards you

Gone, not lost

Unpick the confine

Let her out

That she may find again

Herself

44 thoughts on “Let her out”

  1. I am the flicker of the past, who asks what did you do with your true self – Feeling this! Love the entire piece but those lines especially. ❤️

  4. I love this one. It seems so perfectly balanced, not a line too long. I’m especially moved by

    It’s not the bravado of youth

    But the absence of ghosts

    Keeps us free

  12. “Years passed like finger on fast forward…” For me this is the fulcrum of your poem, the balancing spot of realization. Seems to me your poetry just keeps getting better and better, Candice. This is masterful! 💕💞

  15. I do not know if you meant to have the words coincide with the image as perfectly as they do here, but this works. I can feel the want/need/hope in every line. In the image, I can see it strongly too–more need and want, plus pain, but it’s such a great accompanying image for words that are stronger now (I am assuming) than they may have been before.

  16. I especially liked these lines: “It’s not the bravado of youth
    But the absence of ghosts
    Keeps us free”
    and “I am the flicker of past who asks
    What did you do with your true self?”

    The sentiment makes me think a bit of Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game.”

  18. Very deep and i know just how it felt, to not have your sense of the self intact, it took me a very long time to find it back, and i didn’t even realize that i’d lost it in childhood!

  29. Thank you so much Betty. It has been hard to write lately, at times I just see the entire world differently which is pretty scary given I was a relatively constant person previous to getting sick. I realize maybe I just hadn’t caught up with what I should have known, so now I’m playing catch-up although at times it can feel overwhelming and scary. Thank you so much dear one

  35. I know you are 🙂 And I appreciate it so much! I’m still mulling over what I want to do and haven’t decided yet. I don’t feel up to making dramatic decisions at the moment. I’ll try and explain.

  41. Candice, I can relate to that feeling. Maybe it’s growing pains we all go through every time something significant happens to us. We go through a sort of re-grouping, and it can be starkly overwhelming. But once through it we reconsolidate and expand. New levels of understanding emerge. I think as poets we feel this process more deeply. And what helps is knowing we aren’t alone and that we’re deeply loved. ❤️❤️

  43. I fail and I fall too. I’m human. You’ve got all that you need for when you need it. I assure you of this.

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