Poetry: Selections from Madelyn Morrissey

Default Responses to Crying

Pro tip,

Don't fall asleep with the curtains open.

When you do,

It allows people to care

About whether you are okay or not.

The default response to crying,

One I hear everytime from him,

"You don't deserve any of this.”

But, If I don't,

Then why did it begin,

And If I don't,

Why won't it end?

I want a good relationship with myself;

One that allows me to eat, sleep and live

freely.

Standing in a shower of burning words

Is not something I recommend,

But standing there,

it’s equivalent to loosing pennies,

So what does it matter?

I stand behind them, last in a line of

thousands,

Wondering, gaslighting myself, blaming-

Why am I the backup friend?

And then it hits me-

Everyone else,

With their sunny dispositions

And gracious hearts,

Will always be more than enough.

My hands on the grass,

The tears in my eyes more than enough to

water it.

I think. I pluck pieces of grass out of the

ground.

I think. I think. Again and Again-

Until I can't think no more.

Why was the farewell the hardest part?

I believed him, and still do.

People have said I love you,

And I choose to ignore.

Their love, or what they say,

Is a default response to my pain.

He made me believe,

Because they are not my past.

And it's not fair to treat them as such,

Which leaves me not flinching to the

smallest of their touch.

What if,

The only common thing we shared,

Was our devout love to people who were

there for us?

Trusting yourself, myself is difficult-

Let alone possible when I've changed.

I can only trust myself,

When I'm doing what I'd like myself to do.

But, trust doesn't mean obedience.

Trust means trusting into the unknown,

Into that change-

Or a lack of change.

The discomfort of not knowing,

Whilst ebbing and flowing.

Something I can and never will achieve:

Trust with myself.

An Artist can Become a Poet

And any artist can create beautiful things, 

While the poet creates beautiful words. 

For example, A poet would say, 

And the moon is dark too, 

Only we see it as bright; 

Because it's the paradoxical things 

That turn on the gaudyiest of lights. 

But the artist, 

They would treat words as strokes 

Of a brush, 

See the colors on the canvas as 

Its own palette of thoughts, 

And show experiences that want to be 

Seen, want to be heard. 

There lied the clock, 

Moving hour by hour, 

Hands touching each other, 

But everyone sat there in shock, 

Watching them paint pleasant 

Hues of blue, 

And those pleasant memories resurfaced 

As the poet and artist both felt at home. 

I wonder, 

Can an artist depict the truth 

Of their childhood on one canvas? 

I, a poet, cannot explain 

My childhood in one poem. 

It'd take a collection, a lifetime of poems, 

Just like those blue hues live on forever. 

An artist paints a beach, 

One on a cloudy day, 

But yet the blue hues still made waves, 

Ones that rinse the sandy 

Words of the poets feet, 

Because sand is coarse, irritating, 

Painful, and it gets everwhere; 

Just like the poets words. 

Poets consider themselves 

Opposite the Artist. 

We can describe what it's like to drown, 

And use our harsh words 

to describe the water. 

But Artists visualize it, 

An active nightmare 

They endure until the blue hues 

Have dried. 

I've witnessed people cry, 

The naturality of such pain is the humane part. 

People cry not because they've become weak, 

But because that part of them, 

It has stayed strong for far too long. 

An artist can't depict that, 

Not with any hue. 

A poet however, 

They can write line after line, stanza after stanza, 

And still have more to expose about the tears. 

I've also witnessed the pain of a burning house, 

One that isn't engulfed in flames just yet, 

But could no longer be a home to it's children. 

When a person is born into a burning house, 

They become a custom to thinking the worlds on fire, 

When In reality they're the one that can put it out. 

Poets and artists start fires, 

Heat fueling inspiration for work, 

But there is a sudden difficulty of putting them out.

Madelyn Morrissey has worked on their writing for over three years and is currently working on getting themselves to appreciate what they've written. They live in Rhode Island, and Identify as Non-Binary, using They/them pronouns. They currently live in New England and enjoy reading Non-Fiction, Fiction, and other varieties of novels.