Across her skin
scarified
Are the markers of all her pains,
her joys and hopes
raised high, cut deep within
starkly visible to the eye

This strange affliction
caused by surfeit of feeling?
These signs of tribulation
some may call ugly, bid her hide
each scar line behind clothing,
body paint and artifice

This visible history
arises from feeling, not from choice
Just stretching, yearning to grow
Strange perhaps, I’ll give you
But in this web of change
it only shows the process
of internal re-arrangement

It is her history upon her skin
Her growth and lessons
Her hopeful and hopeless heart
Looking odd to you, looking alien
I see others turn away

But this is only transformation
In her terms, all that she knows
Her journal of a journey
which others may not recognise
And I wonder to myself
in such moments, should she cry
Would the caterpillar say
‘How ugly is the butterfly!’

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved