Kaleidoscope

[You told me that your god was beautiful,
but I have not complained about every ugly thing he’s done
for the sake of saving face.
If there is such a thing as grace, then I must presume
either that I have not earned it, or he’s saving it all for you…]

So don’t you worry about a thing.
Surely your god’s got you like a puppet on a string.

She had a stained glass window for a heart –
a shoebox for a chest cavity, and a kaleidoscope for a soul
that would reflect its light back at me.
Depending on the day, she shone different colors.
She had a handful of favorites that she kept locked inside her cupboards.
She’s got drawers in her stomach,
She knows how to swallow her pride,
but it get compartmentalized in the crawl spaces,
and builds up inside.
She says she’s fine, but she lies, so she keeps sunglasses on to try to hide her eyes.
And at night, she stays out of the shadows – it’s one of the only times that her true color shines.

She says, “You’re talking about me like you know what I mean,
but you know nothing, nothing at all about leading that kind of life.

Baby doll, my heart is as black as my lungs are.
I keep bitterness in these cabinets next to all my bad habits –
You either find faith, or lose it – you either had it or have it –
Well I have had it!

So I wear my smile on the good days that I keep in these baskets,
wear my grimace facing life without the opiate for the masses.
You pop your god like these pills that I take to bear the circumstances –
What’s the difference? I called out to your god, but he never listened.
You call it praying, well I’m just wishing that things could’ve been different.”

She says her daddy didn’t want her, so she squanders to be the mother/father figure for her daughter.
A piece of clay, recreating herself as a beautiful basin from the situation that she's been placed in –
build for retaining life –
a feat manufactured without the proper water or the potter…
And her heart… it cuts like a knife! It’s priceless and it’s as hard as a diamond,
but she’s been selling it for nickels and everybody’s been buying.
So now there’s cracks in the basin, the way there’s cracks in the basement –
the place that daughter’s daddy beat her in when she’d dare to face him…
the way there’s cracks in the cement that she can dig her high heels in
while she waits for another customer to come and pour his water in.

She says her momma was a little bit crazy, a little lazy, a little biased towards the media mainstream.
Prone to fainting or naming it fainting when she’d pass out after blazing
just after papa came home late for the hazing.
The alcohol made him crazy! See, that’s when I started praying, praying, praying,
but nothing’s started changing, changing, changing, so that’s when I started blaming, blaming, blaming,
we’re all on our own, there's nothing in those stars, there’s no hand out there to save me, save me,

Save me.

She loved Vogue, and American teen magazines, almost as much as she loved vomiting
to try to match the model women that she’d she on the movie screens. Says, “I believe that she loved me,
and maybe it’s a fantasy, but I believe that she cared for me the way she cared for her methamphetamines."

Don’t tell me I need saving! You point those fingers so righteously,
all these people pushing for me to practice their piety… well, I gave your god a chance to save me,
so thank you kindly, greatly, but it’s just me and my baby,
me and my little girl – us against the world, so…

Sweet dreams, daughter!
I’m gonna be your mother!
I’m gonna be your father!
Every time another man just like her father bought her,
she spent the nickels on diamonds for her daughter.

She had prisms for eyes – and one time she took off her mask, and let me inside.
I paid her for her time, told her that she was valuable and she replied,
“Yeah but about as valuable as the next man in line.”

Well I came to tell you that you’re beautiful. I think you’re lovely.
I think that you’re made for more than you’ve settled for.
She said, “All of them, every single one of them tell me they love me.

I used to dream, I used to have big plans, I used to believe that there was something out there
that was bigger than me, and that he would take care of me,
and that I could grow up to be whatever I wanted to be, but I guess it’s too late for me,
so I started selling my dignity to give my daughter that dream, and to make it a reality…

I used to dream! I never meant to quit!
So who’s to blame for this bullsh-"

Shh-shh, girl, I will not even mention… it.
The hands that we’re dealt – I don’t understand.
And I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t know all the plans.
I just wanted to tell you that you’re beautiful, I think you’re lovely,
I think I know love that loves the unloving.

“Yeah! You told me your god was gorgeous,
but I just can’t see it! I want so badly to see color! I want so badly to believe it!

I keep an ounce of hope inside one dresser drawer in my chest!
Every now and then, it grows if watered to a seedling, at best.
One time, it grew and stretched through the cracks into the next,
but I just can’t make it blossom, 'cause I just can’t make myself forget…
and now there’s nearly nothing left…

She’s got a kaleidoscope soul, but she’s got grayscale lenses,
she’s got rod-iron bars to keep up her defenses.
She’s got all of her emotions hung up on hooks in her closets,
she’s got little hints of happiness tucked away inside her lockets.
She’s got high hopes of heaven stapled to the doors of her cabinets,
she wraps the hopes up in packets of personal baggage to mask it.

She’s got angels singing to her from the lips of ballerinas in a music box
that she keeps locked behind this door that’s cemented to a heart of rocks,

but if you knock long enough, they say that door could be opened.
Here’s to hoping… until then, I wanted you to know
that you’re beautiful. Like I think you’re lovely,
I think I you're made for more than you're settled for

She said, "all of them tell me they love me"

I think you’re gorgeous, I still think it’s true.
I swear there is more hope out there for you.