slow growth

This verse with thick-veiled meaning lies
Its message in a deep disguise
It means whate’er I’m wanting to be read

You mayn’t detect the undertones
Yet one might sense it in his bones
He’ll know because he’s seen my look of dread

She’s seen it, too, descending cloud
Joy covered with a burial shroud
Can watch me move with haste from heart to head

So now they both see – I can’t hide
The terror seeps from deep inside
Cannot contain the pain that’s gone unsaid

Perhaps if spoken, then I’ll feel
Believe the therapeutic spiel?
Get inside, out, take off these well-worn threads

I want to feel! I want it real!
My heart has a hermetic seal
The cap is made from pure and heavy lead

She pried some off, he chips some more
To find the man I was before
So that this corpse will rise up from the dead

I let them hammer, peel, and scrape
To let the sun-starved seed escape
And grow e’er sunward with my leaves widespread

A tender sapling, roots not deep
Too long in seedpod did I keep
Painstaking growth when “easy” would mean “fled”

‘Tis late to be a foundling sprout
Should be a sturdy tree and stout
But “should” is banished – never to be said

Am what I am; I start anew
What “should” be is what “is” for you
You give me what I need, my soul is fed.

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Poetic form: Tripadi