Plastic Beads

Pattern hues run down these plastic beads

Purple, green, yellow, and round they go

I run my fingers down each sphere

To count the blessings I might obtain

Neglecting my thoughts

As if they were my last to call, I knew

For praying you’ll catch my fall

Tiptoeing off, straighten up,

Yet slipping away, oil and all

Make myself forget, I spin out of control

Like a rocket man

countdown, 3, 2, 1, but before an explosion

The delicate string snaps

Catch them before they touch the floor

Like jacks and a ball

Chaotic orders of patterned colors emerge

No more begging on my knees

But I do, to pick up each bead

Please, I’ve done it all

I fought off each grim thought and accepted the call

But it was never enough

The various minds of my own

Never a place to rest, or to even christen home

A foreign thought

I never knew once before

Barefoot, standing atop the wooden floors

A plague of the soul

where death creeps through each crack

Dreadful is the silence

As a sturdy door locks the in from running off

But the thoughts of the unknown materialize

Wrapping my tiny fingers around each bead

Grasping myself a hold of a safer reality

Where the forest green

Meets the ultramarine ocean breeze

And a yellow sun kisses the purple mist

I have overcome and released my mind

To a fairytale ending

Where the woodland creatures

greet a familiar stranger

This escape is all too known

An inevitable end

For where I rest is a home of a home

Not of my own, yet not alone

And so I must pay an adieu, to you

Vanquishing the pallor

To accept the distinctive pigment stains

Of purple, green, and yellow plastic beads.