Watermarks

Watermarks

The watermarks life gives us
The scars that it provides
The stamps we gain on entrance
The ink, it stains outside
And though we try to hide them
The stains such times provide
A sign that’s held up to the light
No matter how we shied
Away from fervent readers
Touching, brail like, our scars
That pain, that substance feeds us
Makes us unique to our parts
More than just an open book
With no dog ears paged
Paper flat and pristine, white
Belying its true age
With no grit geared through the fonts
And neat print on display
Old ink should look dated
Its in watermarks, we play
Puddles jumped in, settled
An outline over time
A flash of colour freckled
Completes the rough hewn lines
To the sketches that confine us
In stained stark strains of doubt
We try to stay within the lines
But colours, they bleed out
With scabs that heal over
And mortal wounds that don’t
Roles in which our souls play
… The stories where they won’t
Times when spines stay unbent
With stories never read
Safe, shelved high and unspent
Whilst flood damage, it spread
Smudging tomes stored lower
Each cautious leaf and turn
Distorted text read slower
Marked in books and burnt
Burnt into that tattoo
Earned long over time
Bared in shame we have to
There’s pride in the design
Flood tides mark the lines bought
Harsh truths and lies we’re sold
Underneath stains, time taught
Our stories, they are told
To the ones that choose to read us
To the ones who get the plots
As life’s needles, the bleed us
They mark us, and our lots
The lots that we are granted
The plots that twist and bend
It’s the water marks that make us
… distinctive in the end