Kaleidoscope

She is teardrops

fallen on a pretty page of words that I could never think up.

She is coffee,

mostly creamer and whipped cream, drizzled caramel swirls falling over the edge of her cup.

She is ninety-nine percent smiles and warm hugs,

on one percent low battery, don’t talk to me.

She is busy zesting the lemons life threw at me,

please do not look too closely,

the floors are dirty.

She is polarizing,

like a white bear napping in a field of lavender.

She is affirmations every other week in the mirror

I'm good enough I’m good enough I’m good enough

Am I?

She is 4.0 GPA and President’s List,

googling the word epiphany.

She is rainy Sundays and muddy puddles and making magic

on bended, bloody knees.

She is to be continued and find out next week,

and always waiting for the other shoe to fall.

She is Thanksgiving dinner,

and the island of dishes that has made the dirty dishwater her ocean.

She is a butterfly,

wings flapping against the winds of routine that bind her.

She is a kaleidoscope,

shift and turn her any which way-

a ringmaster of chaotic reinvention,

a collector of past lived patterns,

becoming something completely new every day,

Like the mountains of dirty laundry that watch her pass by,

she craves bathing in the cold waters of resurrection

to become clean again.