Weathered by C.L. Warrington

                        Susanne Nilsson CC



Weathered

Like a stone cast upon the beach, 
the sands of time have worn me down.

I am bared, exposed and pared down to all my innermost parts.

Like an empty shell rolling in the waves 
my exterior reflects all my trials and tribulations.

Beautiful in its emptiness, it nonetheless reminds one of what had once been and will never be
​again.

Thick skinned and world-weary, my life's journey
has been pitted with sharp stones and even sharper words.

The actions of others have tried to shape and conform me
but like a lone tree in the storm I've resisted the thorns that have torn at me.

Weathered may I be I'm more now than I used to be.

What's been lost along the way has turned out to be my gain.
Admission, like exposure is a form of liberation. 

Worn down may I be,
I'm more now than I used to be.

​

I find myself continually split between my professional persona and my private persona, and poetry helps me strike a balance between the two. I earned a Master’s Degree in Anthropology from the University of Texas at San Antonio, as well as a Teacher’s Certificate from Sul Ross University: Rio Grande College. I have been teaching Language Arts and Social Studies at an elementary campus for the past eleven years and am a self-published author. I’ve only recently begun dabbling with poetry, and some of my work has been published in various online magazines and the upcoming Upon Arrival issue of Poetry Nation’s annual amateur poetry contest, slated for August 2020. 

For me, writing is my safety valve; I’ve always “lived inside my head” and it is the one place where I can fully shed whatever societal pressures and expectations have been placed on me and just be. I consider myself an introvert and will generally keep my thoughts and emotions bottled up for the sake of others’ feelings, but once I power up my laptop I allow all of that to flow through me. Pain, confusion, and the fear of being misunderstood (and rejected) finally make sense when they are translated into print, stanzas, pages, and lines. I believe that in this way that these feelings have been transformed into art and are now somehow elevated from simple emotional turbulence into something more.

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