Growing Pains

Every lesson I’ve learned

Has come with expenditure

I’ve eaten

Of sorrow’s lurid fruits

I’ve wiped sweat and tears

From a shadow-woven visage

I’ve suffered

And in the nucleus of strife softened

I’ve worn the faces

Of countless women

And the shoes of fellow drifters

I’ve faced both mirror and metronome

With a resolve to live and become

I’ve wasted and cherished

Chased laughter through open fields

Loved as if gripped by contagion

Sinned and served

Morals for which no law

Need profess and for which no law

Could deter if I determined

The deed in circumstance just

For I have the sense to know

Without threat or damnation

The ethos which governs my soul

I know that rebellion is essential

When governing bodies oppress

That true peace conceals

Neither arsenal nor agenda

I have failed

Despite endeavor

And in failing

Surpassed limiting contractions

Like can’t and won’t

I have survived

With the inconsolable notion

That survival

Is not enough

I have struggled forward

Knees, elbows, nail beds

Unclean

Every triumph

No matter how infinitesimal

Stacked on a foundation

Which I have built

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Prompt 23 Anais Nin Quotes

This weeks challenge is quotes by Anais Nin. I will offer five here but you are welcome to use others. Please specify either in the comments section below or somewhere in your post which quote(s) you used for inspiration. The quote can be a part of your piece or strictly the inspiration. As always you are free to submit multiple entries and as always you are free to express yourself in whatever method(s) you prefer. There is no length restriction on entries and I will read your entry no matter the length but I cannot guarantee that every participant will do so. That said I do ask that you read and comment on as many entries as possible. If you want to use multiple quotes that is perfectly fine. If you want to do a tribute piece to Anais Nin by all means free. You do not have to do a tribute piece and in fact do not have to mention her name anywhere in your piece aside from giving credit to her in your chosen quote(s). I do not censor and I do not ask that you censor your work but always make a note about rating or content if you feel it necessary.

On to the quotes

1

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

2

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”

3

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

4

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”

5

“There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.”