Diversity of opinions (this is not a poem)

[elizabethnotes]

Sometimes
I feel as if I'm a tree

Sometimes
That tree is splitting

Splitting down the middle of the trunk

As each branch is pulled and stretched

Yanked and wrenched

By the many strong hands of Contention

And I feel my roots growing more and more frantic

As if soon I shall break into pieces of firewood

Or pieces of furniture (for Contention to sit upon with Contentment

Until Contentment can no longer bear Contention)

Or perhaps splinters (for Contention to use as weapons)

Or perhaps a target will be fashioned out of my tree-body

(For the entertainment of Contention and friends)

Sometimes

I wish I could be the hands of Contention

Full of power and self-righteousness and superiority

So that I wouldn't have to feel painful anymore

So I wouldn't have to be that ripping tree

So I could feel Contention's anger

Because there is power in rage and anger

And it feels better than pain

Rending me apart

Ripping from leaves to roots ever so slowly

Making me wish to X in the style of "A Wind in the Door"

As Proginoskes, leaving no matter behind

To avoid serving up my twigs, branches, trunk, and roots

As weapons, tools, and games of Contention

However, I cannot become the hands of Contention

Because I have roots, and hands do not have roots

And I need the soil to survive

Soil and water and light

And if I join the hands of Contention, I shall starve

And so here I rest

Roots buried in the soil, clinging to rocks

Looking to the Sun, hoping for Rain

And begging the North Wind to blow the hands away