Yin and Sometimes Yang by Nicole Barth [9/28/10]

Picture a drawing of a young woman.

Now give her mahogany hair that ripples like a current—

and blood shot eyes.

Then divide this diagram in half.

Each half ricochets against the other,

—they are grains of Aeolian sand—

perfecting and smoothing out

its neighbor,

polishing and refining

the heinousness

that lingers and loiters within

the self-berating side,

and

caressing the tender cheek

of the quivering, ever-hopeful

child that chooses to believe

—regardless of her nearly quotidian debasement—

in self worth.

For this sketch,

this drawing,

this girl whose anxious eyes

have fought back

the uncertainty

lurking behind

her leaking emotions

is both the lighthouse and the crashing waves that beat against it.