Chiseled

We come into this world handed perfectly, from heaven like pristine blocks of flawless marble We've come then so as to be defined by the dual artists of time and life; Pain and his sister, Joy They chisel and scrape and brush diligently at us to reveal our true forms; flawed yet perfect, pure yet changed Different, yet simply who we are not who we were meant to be; but real and true, as true can be And yet knowing this, we resist; we clutch tightly at the deceit of pride or bind on the blindfold of denial We scrabble about on the dusty canvas that's laid on the floor of our life's studio, pecking, scraping for what we thought is lost We search blindly, often frantically for the precious chips and blocks that those twins have peeled away; yet they're gone forever We sometimes find and then, hopelessly, try to patch the fissures and hollows with the detritus our duo have left behind A fool's errand this; a false hope for this is merely the dust and debris of what was; not what is, nor what can be We must leave that dusty art behind to learn to love what is and forget what was, before we may find, what can truly, be