July 2019 – Tiger's Daydream

Butterfly Bones

i had butterflies through my entire body

ready to rip my chest apart

and fly from my rib cage

my heart fluttered its wings

my body floated to the ceiling

and there was no chance of falling

for a weight had been lifted

making me light as a feather

and a cover had been pulled

making me bright as Sirius

Agathophobia – Fear of Kindness

So I recently invested in a small but wonderful bracelet from Hot Topic

In case you can’t tell, this bracelet is made up of “dots” and “dashes.” It spells out a word in morse code. If you wanna solve the mystery on your own, here’s the code:

If you don’t want to waste your time, scroll down

My bracelet translates to “Ahole,” or in other words: Asshole. Now, I didn’t buy this bracelet to label myself as an asshole. I also didn’t buy it because it looks like a nice piece of meaningless jewelry. I bought it to remind myself of how shitty people can be sometimes (including myself). Every time I look down at my bracelet, I will think one of two things:

1) “They are being an asshole to me, but hopefully, they don’t mean to”

2) “I am being an asshole, so stop being rude and choose kindness”

This code reminds me to be authentic. Since the norm for society seems to be “fight fire with more fire,” I want to remind myself that (for the most part), that is never going to work in my favor – I would know from personal experience. So instead, when someone is being rude, I simply need to take 5 seconds to be frustrated (mentally), and then calmly approach the situation with the intention to defuse any conflict. It also reminds me of a brilliant line from the tv show Lost:

Jack: “… And I knew I had to deal with it. So I just made a choice. I’d let the fear in. Let it take over. Let it do its thing. But only for five seconds. That’s all I was gonna give it. So I started to count to five. I could feel it inside — like when you drink a milkshake on a hot day. One, two, three, four, five. And it was gone.” – S1E1

Instead of fear, it would be anger, or frustration, or whatever negative emotion is present when dealing with difficult people. On top of that, I think it’s important to allow yourself to feel what the situation calls for. I believe it’s foolish to pretend you aren’t feeling negative when you are, but I also believe you shouldn’t act upon that negativity in a violent/extreme way. As everyone says, “communication is key” and if you want to express that something makes you upset, then do it. It doesn’t have to turn into a brawl of any sort (and if it does, then either you or the other person approached the situation incorrectly, causing it to escalate). If the other person (or people) truly are an asshole and think it’s entertaining to start a fight, then just walk away. There’s no point in fighting a bully (unless it’s through kind words).

Overall though, this bracelet is a reminder that humans make mistakes and have bad days. We can’t condemn them for it and we need to practice patience. Now, whenever I’m in a rough situation, I have a shiny reminder that no one is really the villain, it’s just one of those days – approaching it with positivity will make the difference 🙂

tHORNY Roses – Poem Analysis

good Evening, little Primrose

your leaves make me bleed

you’re thornless, I suppose

planted with blood on your seed

This is a special poem of the week because it’s the first time I’m going to explain the significance. Even though this is a short poem, I will explain what every line means and show you where the easter eggs are.

The most general idea of this poem is that this flower represents a human’s personality from their leaves (attributes) to their thorns (negative characteristics) and the way they are planted (behavior).

First off, I intentionally made every line lower case to emphasize an easter egg in the first line. The only capitalized words in this poem are “Evening” and “Primrose” and this is because there’s actually a flower called the evening primrose (left). As you can see, this flower looks like it has thorns on its stem, but really, the leaves are just super pointy. From a distance, this flower may look intimidating, but it’s not.

This became a message that appearances are different from far away compared to up close. That’s why the second line is “your leaves make me bleed.” Although the leaves aren’t sharp, they look like they could cut someone and do some damage. This line is also a play on words: “leaves” represent goodbyes. When someone says goodbye, they leave your side and that can be painful sometimes. Similarly, when you get cut deep enough to bleed, it’s also painful.

Again, this whole poem focuses on the outward appearance. In the third line, the writer is talking to the flower, or the person the flower represents. It’s written in a tone that is unsure and somewhat condescending because although there is nothing harmful on this flower, it still looks like there is. Therefore, the writer is being cautious of its interaction with this plant.

This brings us to the last line: planted with blood on your seed. This has two meanings. If a seed is planted with blood on it, that means it’s an unpure seed. The way I see it is that a bloody flower can either be good or bad. It can represent a plant that is full of life and literally contains “a mother’s touch” or it will wither because a seed that is grown by blood instead of water won’t blossom.

Now that you know the significance of this short poem, you can understand that it essentially represents the essence of human life. People are either innately virtuous or evil but you have to dig to the roots to find out which one they are.

Thanks for reading! I’m glad I could share this explanation into my intricate thought process when writing a poem. (Not all my poems require this much thought though – sometimes they have no meaning at all) ☻