Body vs. Soul
Location
There was a distinct difference
Between my body and my soul
And I was homesick for a place
Where my heart could be full
And my mind understood
Body
She moved in a way that knew no love
Flamboyant, rhythmic, fluid
She waltzed in a way that knew no hurt
Quick, risky, painless
Her eyes lit up in conversation
Dancing, darting, dazzling
Her hands told stories of their own
Raised in the air, pumping her fists, unraveling the day's tale
Her strawberry tainted lips, pursed as she frantically studied
Barely ajar as she exhaled her worries
Her hair draped long, extended down to her hips
Dark and lustrous, full of life
Her slim waist paired with curvy, wide hips
And skin as warm as a plush blanket fresh from the dryer
She smelled of spring time, of clover and pine mixed with honey and citrus
She sported antique jewelry with iridescent glow
She appeared poised, calm and collected
Nobody could have known she derived from glass bones, from paper skin
Soul
She had a war going on in her mind
And neither side would surrender
She had known what it was like to be loved
And she knew what it was like to have lost
She struggled to build a home inside her own skin
Because she did not feel at rest there
She was the type to sit in the car long passed switching gear to park
Revving up the volume on her Alpine stereo
Converting her steering wheel to drum sets, she was Ringo Starr
Cramming in those last two verses
Her Prius bumped like The Gorge
She was the type to order Chinese food
Just to anxiously crack open her wonton fortune cookie
Hoping it would reveal some unknown meaning
And gullibly believing it clarified life
She was the type to procrastinate studying
And during lunch, disregard the cafeteria
Instead nailing the Quadratic Formula into her brain
Cursing geometry and her satanic teacher all the while
She was the type to muffle her cry at 2 am
Sobbing into her plush, Downy scented pillow
Over the heartache she felt from some low class, scum of the earth boy
Who could not uphold a promise
She was the type to claim she had plans
Even though her only schedule for the evening
Was drowning herself in mint chocolate chip ice cream
After receiving poor marks on her finals
She was the type to search for meaning in everything
Swearing life offered an abundance of underlying secrets
She frequently wandered the woods to collect her theories and thoughts
And returned with little newfound perspective on life, but instead wreaking of pine and sap
And she would be lying if she said she didn’t spend countless nights
Alone at 4 am, intently studying her hands
Reflecting upon whom they had touched, whom they had once loved
But the truth was, nobody had really felt her
Nobody had crawled inside her skin, or felt the depths and shallows of her soul
And so she ached
For she felt endlessly empty
She cried the rivers in her bones dry
The volcanoes in her chest had long passed erupted
And hard, molten lava blanketed her body and hardened over
But nobody could see the ice that had settled over her soul
Everything was so fragile inside
And nobody recognized it