the first one i ever did

Can You Be OK With It?

There is no mass-produced human.

Money doesn’t grow on trees and as soon as you spend it, it’s gone.

Trees and brick walls and snowflakes don’t change but for us they do depending on who’s watching them.

One size doesn’t fit all

and sometimes sizes don’t fit at all.

When our hands meet they say something different than they did yesterday and something better than when they hung empty.

But sometimes empty is better filled with “I” and not “you” for now

and maybe my pen will just write words to America.

To me and my great-granddaughter who will have forgotten space and earth smells because her parents forgot to

tell her.

Sometimes a smile isn’t happy and tears bring the sweetest moments.

Sometimes I want my muted colors and lace-up boots

and sometimes I want my t-shirt

but what I really want is air that you can breathe and say, that is the world coming alive, and bare feet in grass and flying over the pool noodle.

We all have hard white walls and someone can push and push and we stay cool and firm, but poke us a certain way and they fall through the walls because they’ve shattered us.

And when you shatter their shell it feels good because you see their love and hate and it doesn’t fit anymore

because those hard white walls were what everyone else thinks

and everyone else doesn’t care about love and hate-

they let you be with your walls.

But I care

and I’ve broken my walls for you and you can see my delight and fear, see through me like the glistening pool around my dreams and trials, the bright yellow core of me that takes ages to swim through.

But I care.

I don’t want white walls because they’re all the same.

I want cracks in people’s conformity, cracks like fingerprints ‘cause they’re never the same.

You two can like the same song but chances are 

when you open your mouth it will come out different 

when you sing it because your hurt is different,

your veins carry different poison,

and your mouth speaks different hope.

The problem is that we can never understand because there’s no mass-produced fear or joy or revenge. 

Love can mean a billion things and we come close to knowing what your love means

but we can’t get there because it’s yours.

So I can hold your hand and hear your words and watch you fall over

but you are you and I can’t enter your world, nor you mine.

So we cry and scream and triumph uniquely alone, but up, up

our words mean the right thing and our joy is understood

exactly as we live it.

Because there is no mass-produced human. 

Because you cut that tree down and I want to climb it and both are OK.

Because we leave fingerprints that say

I was here.

My feet walked and my mouth let my brain communicate and when I left                 

it was better.

Olivia Madsen

February 2013