Paper
Like a piece of paper
Delicate, smooth, thin
How quickly she can change
From spirited to short,
How quickly she can crumple
Her crisp edges and rough corners,
Constantly re-shaped--
Cranes, bookmarks, fortune tellers, chains
Just to be flattened back out,
Blank and plain.
Not quite immune to fire,
She can immediately burst into flame.
Stomped on,
Shaken out,
And used all over again
She is seldom herself,
As her qualities are stamps of others.
Colors and pictures mark her all over
Just to be erased and rewritten,
Torn up and thrown away,
Tossed ever so gently into a bright green bin
Where she decides she’ll recycle herself all over again.
She comes in different forms,
Depending on which side of her you’ll see.
Who will cherish her, creased with delicate hands
And who will cut her into pieces
The fragile paper snowflake that she is?
To some she is colorful and bright,
Playing the role of what she was cut out to be,
But will it be too much?
She’s only flimsy, they say.
She comes and she goes,
Reused and reduced,
Torn and scissored thin.
She holds a few blank spaces, circled in red pen.
She is not perfect, as you can see.
She tries and she hopes
That the staples and glue
Will keep her many forms in one piece
-Keatyn Wuest, freshman
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