Hard Baked Truths
To open myself and set words free; to reveal my truth, beauty, and love is to pull apart freshly baked bread and see the steam billow out like smoke. The hard crust surrounding hot softness is strong and vulnerable like me. Take a bite out of my fresh, hot bread. You are here with me. A part of me. We two fools are so vulnerable. We openly hide from the hard truth, To surround ourselves with a softness. It tastes beautiful; our love is strong. Then you pull me so crudely apart! Open me and fill me with hot smoke-- hard truths about myself--surrounding yourself with hard crust while you get to be set free from my beautiful love? Your strong words leave me vulnerable. Earth’s thin crust restrains billowing heat. Vulnerable humans are not strong. We can barely break the ground apart. The rock, though, cannot see its beauty, while we can make words to speak our love, truth, hardships, and manipulations. Hot words can burn the strongest to ash turning truly soft ones like myself into baked, then burned, then smoked bodies… Is there beauty in surrounding pain which can transform my fresh skin into a hardening, crumbling crust? Opening fresh love towards myself, I now live to bake our bread daily. Freedom comes with soft dough and strong crusts. Hot steam billows out of the oven. There are no truthful words to describe tasting the bread that I made myself. I bake hot and fresh words: “I love you.” You might pull apart my soft bread, true. I want that vulnerable beauty. bio: "Khadeja Ali is a poet and visual artist from Massachusetts who uses her art to explore themes of the heart and the mind. She has a degree in Art History as well as a Master's in Intercultural Relations--both of which inform her life experience and her art. Khadeja is a native of Mauritius with ancestry from Eastern Europe. You can find her on twitter as @khadejalidraw."
Fevers of the Mind 