Paperweight Poetry

If you were dying in every way when in every way I was more alive,  I would still choose you over me again and again, For I don't care what the numbers are,  I would bet upon your stars.  -anna sluder

Would you rather dream in color, Than live a life in black and white?  If only I knew wish I'd rather do,  Paint my dreams, Or let my dreams paint you, But perhaps it is not about,  What color I let meander,  From my paintbrush onto the ceiling of my thoughts,  Or even if I choose a color at all, It is not about which shade or hue, But it is about deciding which dimension is true, The canvas that stretches before me, Over tufts of land and waters that roll,  Or the one in my mind at night,  All these dreams caught in my soul.  -anna sluder 

The day that you decide you are worthless  Is the day that you give up the fight But you are not any more worthless  Than the sun is to the sky  You are infinitudes unbreachable  A hurricane when I'm afraid of the waves  So don't fool yourself into thinking you are defined By only a number, size, or a name For darling you cannot comprehend How perfect you truly are  For even if I only had your flaws I would show everyone those scars.  -anna sluder 

Whenever he hurt me, like he often did again and again, I, the woman, was quiet and wouldn't give my words up, For every time he futilely asked to be forgiven, I knew, that for an answer my silence was loud enough, But that was the past, so now I burn it all until it rots, And I rise above the ephemeral ashes of you, For I am everything I am and everything I am not, I am a woman, but I am more than a woman too. -anna sluder

I was the terrified little girl standing behind my mother's shadows and the shadow of her tears, I was the horrified little girl, steamrolled to the wall as boys dug up between my thighs, With their hands to my mouth, my tongue choking back down my throat fighting to ask why, I was the terrorized little girl's whose head shrunk between her knees, As his father raised his hand to smack her, only for playing in the trees,  But now I am the joyful woman who knows where she belongs, Who listens to the God that lifts her up when everyone else tells her that she's wrong.  -anna sluder 

There are people with eyes that falter to see,  Yet there is always something left,  Even for the ones who cannot hear or speak, Not every goodness is so volatile to be bereft,  For when a blind person cannot perceive the sky,  The universal way for them to heal, Isn't to describe the color blue to them, It is to get them to feel,  But if one morning you were awoken,  And couldn't feel the earth beneath your feet,  As well as the joy or melancholia in your soul,  Would you have enough feelings from the past to carry on your own heartbeat?  I pray there would be happiness leftover,  From all the moments drawn to a close behind you,  To remember that the joy isn't only in the color,  The sky is more than something blue.  -anna sluder