Whispered In The Wind

Whispered In The Wind
Just a fairy blowing in the wind, singing tales to the west wind

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Show. Don't tell.

~ prose poetry attack..again!~

Show. Don't tell .

Here's the thing.


They say "Show. Don't tell." But isn't everything written on my sleeve, bleeding out from my heart? Maybe we all ought to tell a bit more. This whole showing thing is starting to drain me. I've shown this and I've done that, but in the end I've barely told anything. 

I'll show you how I feel about them, how I feel about you. You can read my face and the cracks in my skin. Feel free to watch me show you how to mess up and trip over one's own feet. I'll show you how to cry over nothing, how to get confused by the voices in your own head. I'll show you how to care so much your veins pop and your eyes bulge. I'll show you jittery nerves and perspiration on my brow. I'll show you every little paranoid quirk in me. I can walk up and down stairs with no purpose, just so my blood keeps pumping and I remember how to breath. It's perfectly acceptable to watch me raise my hand and bite my lip, waiting for the teacher to call on me. I tap my feet with nervous energy and burn it off by flipping my hair like a manic hair stylist. I will breath heavily so that you ask me what I'm thinking. When you don't I will sigh like a lonely hound dog. I won't howl at the moon but I will sing underneath it. That way  you know what a once sane person morphing into a night lunatic looks like. I will show you everything. Every layer of my rainbow skin and red blood, blue within.

But I wish I could tell you more, so I didn't have to make it all so painfully obvious. If I knew how to tell more, speak out better, then you could have a better sense of me without me falling over my feet and scraping my knees. I could tell you about blood, rather than you seeing the crimson dripping from my knees. But it seems I'm doing better with this showing, though not what I want you to see. I don't want to be the know-it-all with her nose in the air. Is that what I'm showing? I'm not the sure, steadfast door with wooden frames. But they said show, don't tell. 

I'm botching it all.

I'd tell you about the way the sun kisses the ocean and the birds sing to the trees. I want to tell you about the way I laugh in my head at every single strange thing you say. I'll tell you about the dreams I have, that clutter my eyes and are scattered through my bedroom.

But instead I'm stuck showing you how I can answer every question and still get it all wrong.

"I want warm summer nights, to lie in a hammock, staring at the stars, telling you stories. "

"I want warm summer nights, to lie in a hammock, staring at the stars, telling you stories. "
"When asked not to make waves, I just smiled and said, don't worry this is just a ripple"