Linus Korbin Norgren

Where you ruin your eardrums and punish your ma.

It wasn't enough
just chopping me down, so you
cut my heart out too.

It's not unusual
to be small and colorful.

So many flowers struggle
to fit some ideal mold
because but of course—
their petals are not plaster.

Overlarge unsullied
pure white vanilla alabaster
can only see who you can't help but be
as strange, or wrong, or unnatural.

They forget that, sure,
the light may be what brings them into bloom,
but the dirt is what holds us here in place.
The hummingbird's bill is slender,
and Ultraviolet seduces the honeybee
with her off-purple spell of indigo.

So if it's all the same to you,
sully yourself with difference:
Never whitewash with plainness.
Be ruddy and imperfect,
small in who you are—
and you will fulfill your purpose:

To shine less and gather darkly calm
and give off so much more light for it.