Marigene Willson's Writing Workshop

WA 6, Draft 1

Stand in front of the mirror that you often visit in strolls across your mind, and run your hands over your arms, and sides. Feel the ribs lying shallowly beneath the suface of smooth skin. Watch, as if detached as your eye skims the deep cavern that rests over your collarbone, quietly casting a shadow that leers to your chest. Admire the constant movement of organic shape that flows like electricity through your body, simply to contradict itself. Observe the gracefeul way that your hip gives way to your thighs, and waterfalls to the tendons of your little toe. Ignore the slight ebbs and flows upon your waist. Learn to look over the slight dimple that indents the skin on your pale buttock. Look straight into your own eyes for once, as you are used to doing with so many others, and notice that no single fleck of colour in your pupil radiates with exactly the same tone. Travel into your own brain. Question every synapse, flow through the figure eight of capillaries in your fingers, patch the chip on your shoulder, and soften your calloused feet. Give up the intense feeling that you are unimportant unless you are fucking something up. Remember the beauty that you see in everyone’s eyes but your own. Be daring enough to find beauty in yourself: love yourself. Laugh at yourself and take into consideration how cliché this sentiment is, but then, take a moment to consider the definition of cliché—maybe even look it up in the yellowed Webster’s lying on your desk just as a reminder- a trite, stereotyped saying expressing a common idea that has lost originality and impact by long overuse. They forgot the side-note stating that many clichés have the uncanny ability to be…true? Its time the truth was out- give up. Give up, Break. Its not the end of the world, and you certainly have not be knocked over by the wrath of God—hell has not opened to greet you lovingly into its arms. Pause in front of the mirror again, and see that it is not some passageway into a parellel universe. People see what you see. That reflection radiates who you are, and unless you own up to the image you have made, forget about the undying cliché of what love really is.

posted by Marigene Willson @ 4:02 PM