Best for:
Protective Empaths, those reclaiming boundaries or learning how to set them, best for deep-thinkers, slow scrollers, lovers of experimental poetry and visceral callouts.
THE PERSPECTIVE SHIFT:
There is a heavy, quiet exhaustion that comes with seeing every side of a story.
We are often told that empathy is a superpower, but we rarely talk about how it can feel like a haunting… draining even.
Imagine for a moment you possess the inability to not play devil’s advocate even when someone is actively setting out to dismantle you.
This is about that specific moment of clarity when you stop trying to wash the page clean and decide, finally, to let the ink set and stain.
POET’S NOTE – THE ORIGIN STORY:
This piece was forged from a chain of moments.
It started with a friend’s Facebook post
“As soon as I see someone's true colors I am no longer going to erase the canvas so they can do it again…. I'm gonna let it stain,…. So I'll remember…”
The post caught my interest while I was out hiking. The imagery followed me through the trails, and by the time I was driving home, it had fermented into something visceral.
LI recorded the first draft via voice-to-text while behind the wheel.
Unfiltered. Containing no punctuation.
Unfiltered.
Later, I moved into the visual editing phase, playing with the falling letters, word combination movements, and spacing to mimic the physical weight of the thoughts.
You’ll notice letters dropping vertically and words drifting; this is a visual dissection of how it feels to process these heavy realizations.
The ending shared “F” at the end between the words “for” and “forgiveness” represents that mental pivot point where an empath’s brain naturally tries to bridge the gap.
Ultimately, and much more importantly art is up to subjective interpretation.
Whatever these words trigger for you is valid, and I would love to hear what you saw in the stains or even in the forgiveness.
Do you disagree with the notion that forgiveness can be just as useful for self sabotage as many other vices.
The Poem
Forgiveness and the Stain;
I was cursed with an empathetic soul…
A
bles
s
i
n
g
in
disguise.
Plagued with the ability to,
see
more than one side
t
o any
story.
Even those
D
I
R
E
C
T
L
Y
opposing
the
N
A
R
R
A
T
I
V
E in my O
W
N.
Lord knows how many
people,
set out to destroy me.
Yet,
I allowed them to
walk
away…
unscathed.
Thinking
they
got one over on me.
Pulled the
wool E
over my
e
S.
Truth be told,
I simply saw how life could
bring
humankind outside our
humanity.
From now on when spilled ink
from others mars my
P
A
P
E
R,
I have to let it
stain
to
remember…
Or the empath in me will
always
push for
o
r
givness.
THE ARCHIVE:
To remember the stain is not to hold onto bitterness; it is to honor the truth of what happened.
When we refuse to scrub the paper, we acknowledge that our experiences… Yes, even the jagged, unfair ones, are part of the medium we work with.
It is a transition from being a victim of someone else’s mess to being the conscious archivist of your own life.
So What did the stain and forgiveness look like in your world?
Is it a lesson, a boundary, or a badge of honor?
I’d love to hear anything you’d like to share about your own interpretation of my lines.
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