The Isolated Bloom
This poem explores the courage it takes to blossom despite being rejected by the very people we least expect it from, sometimes for no other reason than because I am a woman. It is a reflection on how the very things that once hurt me—the sorrow, the anger, the pain—can become the sacred soil from which something new, something beautiful, and something entirely my own can finally emerge. It is my hope that this poem will be a gentle mirror for your own unfolding.
An inner rage consumes my being.
This injustice, unearthed.
To scorn the woman who dares to feel…
Yet revere the man whose heart’s concealed…
Free to be himself, while she is bound
Bound to be compliant as her true self drowns.
A silent lesson she learns from generations deep
An unspoken trap, she blindly receives
Her innermost feelings, kept buried inside,
For a fragile peace, she constantly must hide.
Against the very ground I was taught to obey,
The life of the bloom suffocates to this day.
Yet, I am the flower bud.
A bloom struggling to emerge from the arid mud.
In her naive acceptance
A connection to the Divine becomes her true repentance,
A slow, gentle opening of her heart
A subtle current stirring to set her apart
To claim her right to FEEL with all of her might.
To no longer accept and be used,
Her very compliance she refused.
The man expects a world he's always known,
But the women, the WOMEN, who excuse his misdeeds
Cast the first, and hardest stone.
She is the flower bud, anchored in the arid ground.
Dusty and unyielding on the surface,
Yet protecting the vibrant life of the bloom within.
This protective shell, shaped
by the hurt, the sorrow, the anger,
Her emotions… awakened… fuse into her being,
Becoming her answer.
And with this sacred rage,
I crack open the arid ground,
From whence I arise and thrive,
I, the ISOLATED BLOOM.
By Sandy Clarisse