The Strong Ones Break

The strong ones are the ones who have

Learned how to break.

From break-ups to breakdowns

To break-ins

Where people have unexpectedly stolen

Our hearts.

We have felt ourselves crumble

Into dust.

At risk of being blown away

By the changing winds of our lives.

Yet time and time again we

Glue ourselves back together again.

Hope, faith, and tears create an emotional cement

That strengthens the remaining cracks in our psyches.

We rise over and over again from the ashes like Phoenixes.

Reborn, recreated and restored.

The Old Tree

apple blossoms

You’re not very pretty

Said little girl to tree

Looking at the hardened buds

That’s all that she could see.

They surveyed one another

In the warm spring air.

The tree old and grizzled

While the girl was splendid and fair.

There is magic yet within me

The ancient wood explained

All I need is the warming sun

And the chilly April rain.

The little girl scoffed and left

Not believing what the tree said

To the girl, the tree didn’t resemble life

The bare branches to her looked dead.

But when she returned in three days’ time

A fantastical sight did she behold

The tree in wondrous splendor

It left her speechless to behold

For each of the buds on the tree had burst

Into blossoms rosy and white

Its secret revealed for all to see

She was awestruck at the sight

Resting her head on the trunk

She silently apologized

The tree in response told her instead

Let this lesson make you wise.

Do not judge by appearance alone

You never know what’s inside

Even the ugliest of forms

Have beauty trapped inside.

And while this is old adage true

The reverse can also be

Beauty can hide the ugliness

It’s all in the way you see.

If It Fits, I Sits

I got a box in the mail

Just the other day

Scissors revealed the contents

The rest was thrown away.

Just as I thought it was finished

That it was all said and done.

A loud whiny meow from behind me came

And cat and box become one.

When he first started to climb

Into the box so small

I had to stand and laugh at him

He couldn’t fit at all.

But then the cat gave me look

And though no words were said

He communicated that he would fit

And the box would be his new bed.

I watched his bones begin to melt

He impossibly liquefied

And as the cat scrunched himself in

I laugh until I cried.

The moral of the story

Before this poem, I quit

In cat-dom it’s entirely true

If a cat fits, it sits.