The Gift of Words

As children, we have no idea that the things we like to do, the things that we are good at, are considered talents, or gifts. For me, writing was one of those things.

I'm what most people would consider an introvert. Rarely would I ever verbally express what was going on in my mind. Instead, I would just write, and write, and write. It was like my second language, or maybe my first, who knows... If my hand and pen were my mouth and tongue, then maybe I would have been a lot better at talking to people.

Regardless to how many times I've heard it before in my lifetime, it wasn't until recently that I realized that my creative writing ability may just be a gift from God. But I guess there have always been signs; like when I was in third grade and my music teacher gave me a failing grade on a creative writing assignment, insisting that it was plagiarized. Or the way I always got good grades in English and was always recognized for my writing. Maybe the poetry contests in high school could have been a dead giveaway, or my college professors telling me that my writing was unlike any others' that they have seen in a Composition class.

But I never took it seriously, I just wrote because I liked to write.

In high school, as a writing assignment, I wrote Metamorphosis. Inspired by an Oil Painting called Evocation of Butterflies created by Odilon Redon.

Metamorphosis

I was a caterpillar

Isolated, deserted, and abandoned;

A lonely soul in a world of company.

Deplored, lamented, ugly

I was hidden in the shadows of subjectivity,

A caterpillar, clinging to a chrysalis's world.

I began to be revitalized, transfigured.

I became more because I was tired of being less.

I was altered;

Diversified into a hypnotic rainbow

And carefully placed into the atmosphere.

Now, I am circuitous, amorous, tenacious;

A disembodied soul devoted to nature's devised dream,

A passionate love-colored creature with wings,

Six flanks of fuchsia feelings and

A slender body in which my former identity is lost.

I am a butterfly,

A magician with a mystical heart,

A provocative pleasure-pursuer sent from a witch's mouth.

I create contentment;

I destroy disconsolation.

I am a butterfly,

A spellbinding seductress.

Copyright (c) 1999 Ms. A.T.L.S.

Published in "Igniting the Sky" and displayed in The Detroit Institute of Arts for a short while.

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Thanks for reading...

Yours Truly,

The Writer