I don’t want to see soft, cream colors of your dreams.

I want raw, exposed, unadulterated
Nakedness of your soul as it squirms in the mud
Of what this is.

I want life bloody and uncooked.
I want the severity of love that only you and I know.

I don’t want the makeup.
I want the scars.

I want to taste the iron in your flesh
As it drips untamed into the soil of rebirth.

I want to hold intimate
The grit and grist of your life.
I want to burn with the raw material of your wounds.
Your freedom.

I don’t want the finished painting.
I want the broken canvases, the spilled paint, the cross-outs,
Do-overs and throwaways.
I want you at your worst. I want the barrenness of your failures
To hurt so bad that you summon the rain

So I can watch
The roots tangled and messy,
The flower blossoms, vibrant and whole 
Radiating everything—

That you are.

Author: Matt Toussaint

Image: Wikimedia 

Editor: Callie Rushton