Beautiful Intent Poem by Sophia White

I hear soft footsteps come down the hall and stop at my door.
She’s here once more.
I lean down lower over my studies, eyes riveted to a figure-riddled page.
I hear her breath in the crystal silence, a breath that grips my core
And brings me to my feet. I turn.
When shall I ever learn? she asks. You fool!
Are you just stopping by? I ask with ice on my tongue.
She smiles just as coldly. At least she might’ve rung
The doorbell, but she just walked in. She always does.

Silence. Silence. Silence.
A thickening, a darkening of ambience.
Her eyes and mine, locked in a duel of wills.
My soul throbs with rapture at the sight of her, but still
My mind rebels and tries to pull my gaze around to my desk.
I’ll just ask.
Are you here, I whisper soft, to dropp a passing verse?
(Oh, whatever happened to the lecture I’d rehearsed?)
Her smile wanes; she will soon cut to the chase.
The answer is scrawled across her face.
I dropp my mechanical pencil, but I do not hear it hit the floor
Because she has entered the door.
And crossed the room. And held out her hand.

My mind relents and is soon lost in wild schemes
(Why not, it hisses, why not let yourself go to your most sacred dreams?)
My soul is ready. I take her hand – and then –
A whirl, a giddy rush of blood fills my head, spots in my eyes,
And then I am not me anymore. Where I am, I cannot tell.
I’ve no desire to return to that pragmatic hell.
Instead, Sophia snips my wretched tether of duty, which tied me to propriety,
To society.
She smiles again – when did her smile seem cold?
I feel so wise, and alive, and extraordinarily identified, and terribly old.

I wonder at my past hesitation.
My fears, bound to my by the tether, evaporate into elation.
Here I am, truly and wildly unique with a mind that aches to create.
There are worlds out there, I am sure of it, and I’m late
To discover them. I was tethered, you see.
But she –
She cut my leash. And now, that tiny, exiled pragmatic and dutiful corner of me
Timidly sends a question that is obliviated by the exploding creativity
Of these two paths – Sophia and me - is this the path I ought to walk
Or am I all talk?
Puffing myself up with grandiose vision and beautiful intent,
When, at long last, this is not at all the world to which I have been sent?

I want it to be my reality.
I want to leave the pragmatic hell, the dutiful halls of nominal charity.
I want to stop filling my head and instead, empty it.
To pour out everything within me, to let it soak into the earth,
Where maybe it will give rise to a harvest far greater…