The Emotion Line by Rita Odessa Villaruel

This could be the right pulsate of emotion
— the one found between too much happiness and a little grief,
the space where a smile is shaped out of satisfaction.

The measuring device of sentiments
my often destructive but self-proclaimed adulthood
have created in my head resembles
the Number Line:
the negative-numbers side being the
absence of hope, or probably ignorance of it,
or where that word human beings have been abusing lies – depression;
whilst the positive-numbers side evinced by
that inescapable state of luck, that is, reality rubbing eyeballs with
dreams and wishes-upon-a-dead-star.
Ideal status would be zero to one hundred,
for when happiness exceeds a hundred, it stretches to infinity,
which means it becomes a delusion.
Negative one hundred to negative one is endurable
wherever there is good music, good company, or for the love of protracted mortality – good pills,
or some liking for nature good enough to make yourself believe
that summer scent literally comes from the adolescent leaves of a tree
some ten meters away from your bedroom’s window.
Who knows, you could be right.

Below negative one hundred
would be worse than stabbing your own eyes
or getting your nails pulled out all at the same time.
It is also infinite: It goes beyond what limbs can handle. You will unbecome you.

The problem is
that it’s not a problem if it goes past a hundred on either side.
It’s not an irony. Was there ever a survivor, winner, and hero
who have astonished their enemies through bare weapons?
Have they not been dragooned by emotions?

And did not emotions need to be a little too much to have done so?

Copyright ©:  Rita Odessa Villaruel 2011

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The End

And that’s the End of the Poem

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