She Is Soul and Stories – A Collaboration

Tiny stories crawl beneath her skin.
Sometimes they breathe love from her heart,
dropping kisses from her soul
and other times they drag sadness
through her core and stay hidden
behind her eyes.

Until the memories find their way inside,
exploding the tears through the blue,
through the brown, puncturing the disguise
of whatever color her chameleon soul told
her to be; self-preservation comes in many shades,
and hers happens to be beautiful, with or without
a smile, because there are many stories to hold
when the ink is born from your blood.

Bursting tall tales
from ink smeared lips; she holds
her stories close. Suffering
the burn of words left unsaid scorched
into her spirit.
She spills her secrets onto deaf souls
and she aches,
to open her own to eyes
that would finally read her.