Inner Woman Volume 2

When I was young

Corrections were fun

I learned to avoid them

I drank in knowledge

Then came the teens

Too tall

Too smart

Four eyes

I wore glasses

Personal attacks of

Disapproving sneers

Your opinion

Doesn’t count

Your voice should not

be different

There’s only one right way

Because I said so

I learned and very slowly

to question the source

Corrections and suggestions

are fine you see

when given with intent to

improve

Tearing down and destroying

isn’t.

If it comes from a place of

Hate

ignore it, use the pain.

I know, easier said than done.

My shell is brittle still, even

Though it’s thick

A critique of the critic

Necessary to know

how to keep my creative craft

flowing.

And still it can bring hot

tears of shame

For no other reason

than our ideas are not

the same.

I am unique

and to some

intolerable

for being me

Their loss

my gain

I WON’T live

with their shame.