Self Portraiture

  • to grow freely. like the flowers. 

     it is ok
 to let go of anger
 to quietly forgive those 
 who hurt you in the past
 this is a gift -
 for you. not for them.
 to step out of resentment
 to release yourself
 from the shackles
 of disappointment 
 to be alive inside your skin,
 again.
 to grow freely. like the flowers.
 rising up to the sunlight
 stretching out tall
 feeling hope flood in.
 remembering what it feels like
 to move smoothly,
 exist in the world
 without the burden
 of pain riding your shoulders
 to be weightless. in the best way.
 go on. fly free.
 it is ok.

    ©lotuscarroll2013
    Image & Text All Rights Reserved No use allowed without a license. For image licensing inquiries, email me directly. [email protected]
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  • lies and smiles

    …What have I eaten?
    Lies and smiles.
    Surely the sky is not that color,
    Surely the grass should be rippling.

    All day, gluing my church of burnt matchsticks,
    I dream of someone else entirely.
    And he, for this subversion,
    Hurts me, he
    With his armor of fakery,

    His high cold masks of amnesia.
    How did I get here?
    Indeterminate criminal,
    I die with variety—
    Hung, starved, burned, hooked.

    I imagine him
    Impotent as distant thunder,
    In whose shadow I have eaten my ghost ration.
    I wish him dead or away.
    That, it seems, is the impossibility.

    That being free. What would the dark
    Do without fevers to eat?
    What would the light
    Do without eyes to knife, what would he
    Do, do, do without me?

    ~sylvia plath, excerpt from “the jailer”

    ©lotuscarroll2019
    Image All Rights Reserved No use allowed without a license. For licensing inquiries, email me directly. [email protected]
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  • bleeding heart 

    a heart that does not bleed
    is not stronger than one that does -
    it is simply dead already.


    ©lotuscarroll2019
    Image All Rights Reserved No use allowed without a license. For licensing inquiries, email me directly. [email protected]

    for self portrait sunday, theme: identity

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  • snowflakes

    what if we all defaulted
    to treating one another
    like snowflakes, truly:
    delicate, beautiful, unique
    things of wonder
    that reflect light onto one another
    what if it was not
    a point of shame, an insult,
    to be soft and delicate,
    to melt in the presence of warmth –
    like the bleeding hearts in our chests –
    what if we glisten so brightly
    that we wear down one another’s
    hardest edges, break through the ice,
    and all that is left is
    an infinite swirling mass
    made of prismatic pieces of love,
    little geometric wonders,
    floating and bouncing
    off one another, endlessly,
    in all our vulnerable glory?

    ©2018 Lotus CarrollAll Rights Reserved No use allowed without a license.
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