‘Stand still little doll, and spin. Spin until you can’t help but fall down.’

At the worst of times, and the best of times I feel the same. My emotions are an airy sort of discontentment, as if my heart is not ever truly touched by anything that goes on around me. What sort of life is that? Can it really be called one at all?

It is not a plight of someone who is unhappy, no, not really that…No. Unhappiness is a clear emotion, a staining spike that forms a tearful memory, after all humans always remember that which harms us.

‘ Bow to the crowd and take notice of those who give you their love, it is the only thing you know.’

It is the same as if I was small, when I was pushed down by a boy and skinned my knee. His name was Steven, a fat boy with thick glasses and black hair that I always thought looked dirty. I realize now that he was just a pathetic coward, just like I was…but then to me; he was the most frightening person in the world. Standing up above me, hand posed to push me further into my temporary pain. For that moment he was the Goethe that could so easily crush my shepherds spirit into dust.

There is no telling what I’d done to offend him, not that it really matters now, all I remember is the happy- sick smile he had gained as he watched my tears departing down my face. My pitiful little pale hands curling up to try and cover the stream of salty tears and snot, which had escaped me. It was an attempt to gain my wounded pride, truly contemptible.

I remember the sickly feeling of helplessness; it spited me for years…being unable to force an attacker away. Maybe that is why I for so long was a bitter sort of person, one who would happily step on those who I deemed unworthy. I had been to afraid to stop him you see, to chilled by mortal ‘danger’ to even yell out for a teacher to stop his bullying. In return for years I was marked from that treatment, becoming just as he was, enjoying others pain.

‘Little winter rose, why do you cry?’

Amazing how that such a thing I can easily laugh off now, stare at the one who pushed me and push back. Forcing all of my anger into one painful strike, which would tear at their very soul, the kindness I was born inclined receding into nothing…

Becoming an entirely dissimilar person for that moment, for an instant retaining that sickening enjoyment that the child Steven had. I can understand him now, though I deplore myself for it.

It is as if I am a butterfly who gained fangs, small ones, which spit and rear at those who attempt to press my wings. A child with a soft empathy who was forced to soon become a snapping viper, made to slither along in the grass and remain unseen.

What color scales do I have I wonder? A beautiful emerald shade that mimics the grass and the soul of nature, caught within the trees that waft in their ancient song above me? That is the mark of something timeless, in the many shades of mystery, which reside in it the depths of the earth. It is the color of Erin’s scales, a beautiful shadow that she cannot really see…to intensely moving through the motions of her life. Trials of the mortal world making her soul that much more of a paradox, which is meant to mesmerize and leave the individual confused and panting. I can see such beauty, held in the gentlest and roughest bite of her elegant neck.

Erin a woman who has been spited, twisted and cursed by fate is someone who I cannot help but long for. It is her nature you see, to be that which is unattainable for someone like me, a person who is far to kind. Kindness is a curse; it leaves you alone in the end, and for someone like her makes you frightening.

One of my suspicions is that she has never had someone who loves her, yet does not harm her. It would be frightening as anything, a new emotion that she would refuse to touch…a rose that she could not take from its snow garden. Afraid of despoiling the witless purity of the red blossoms petals, delicate fingertips only brushing along the fluttering edge of its circumference. So the chaotic angel condemns the fragile flower of my heart to loneliness, the thing she herself despises.

So you see I am not green as she is, nor a light shade of any sort. Those are markings of beauty, outward of the body and inward of the soul; Beauty isn’t something I have been blessed with in outer body, or even truly in heart. If I were a beautiful creature others would stare in wonder as I do to those of truest blessing.

Maybe my shade is a dark red, a color to stain, and yet leave no mark behind when it departs. I think that is my honest truth; I am not a painful creature. My soul is a blossom, the rose that I spoke of earlier. Which wishes for nothing more to be loved, and to love in return. Petals reaching desperately for the love of the brightest sun, above me, yet forced to wound only in the frigid ground cover of the snow. Blooming too early and yet too late, that is the providence of the winter rose, a lonely hapless thing becoming of only its rarity.

‘Are you afraid of the big trees, which possess only the darkest of barks? That they will give you no comfort.’

I attempt with every breath of my lungs to draw in the things, which I think are right, and in return I am forgotten. My thorns turned away from the caresses of those, which I wish to give comfort; in my soul I am unable and unwilling to allow my own fears to harm them.

As sad as it may seem no one wishes for me, or desires my company beyond a momentary lapse. They do not wish to protect me as I would for them; their love is a temporary thing which none will realize fully.

‘Or are you afraid that I will leave thee, despite your beauty, petite Winter Rose.’

It is the curse of the winters rose, alone it its reluctant petty pretty embrace of the chilly wind. The twining marionettes curse, just beyond that mortality which is the end of it last performance, only to be thrown to the side for fear of what it may do when left unbound by its strings.

’ Caress the shadows with your twirling dance, a melded wooden doll held up by the strings of metal. Dressed in an ensemble of buttoned pearl fastens, long black sleeves hiding your frail wooden body. Tip your hat now little doll, and smile with no knowledge of sadness. Amuse, and be forgotten. It is only fait moi cherrie.’