NaPoWriMo 2012 Day 30

A variation on today's prompt (from the facebook group 30/30), taken a couple of lines from the Terrance Hayes' poem 'Gospel of the two sisters', but not quite the last ones

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"How often do you hear the tenderness you need to hear? I mean exactly when you need to hear it? Is it ever before that little yolk of hurt wraps itself in layers hard enough to break teeth?"

Does it sing to you in your own voice, the way it used to sound before bitterness made it brittle? Soothe you in a tone you have forgotten you once owned, full enough to hold loneliness at bay? Hold you in arms, not yet bruised from your own pinches, fuller fleshed barrier against your own heart's brutality?

Because perhaps it is that very tenderness that brings the hurt.  As you reach for the belief that you deserve it, you mock your own comfort, draw it further from your own hands.  Fade the colour of hope with your dry, dark stare until it pales beyond insignificance.

Try to teach yourself the words you sing to others, but falter mid-verse.  Remember the song of forgiveness you preach, but confused with a hymn of recrimination.  Set yourself in their shoes, perhaps, start from there. Believe yourself to be as they say they see you. Believe the kindness is not lies.