"It doesn’t happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand."
THE VELEVETEEN RABBIT
by Marjorie Williams.
is it the poisoned nectar
pouring out like acid rain
etching on your lonely heart
the sweet fluidity of my pain
like a bee collecting pollen
on a drowsy summer day
would you make me honey
and then just fly away
or do you flit across a garden
of a thousand broken hearts
to taste their tear-dust pollen
and yet hold yourself apart
lush swollen petals longing
for the love you’ve dangled there
but so many tempting flowers
fill this garden of despair
no sweet morning glory
nor vibrant hot-house bloom
no exotic centerpiece
or intoxicant perfume
not a gently trailing vine
slowly seeking to entwine
not a rose so perfect formed
to pierce your heart with wicked thorn
but petals softly floating down
to settle gently on the ground
reveal a pulsing more profound
the truth of me at last unbound
not fragile or just ornamental
I’m something real and elemental
the petals from my branches flow
that in their place the peach can grow
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