Canvas

I try so hard to do right...
So hard to be good...

I mess up a lot...
More than I should...

Like a white canvas, I am blank...
The smallest blemish will show...
Compared to other canvases, my blemish is unnoticeable...
A mere speck on a single thread of cotton...

But to me, the blemish is all that shows...
All I can think of...
All I am reminded of...
Like an animal, it eats at me...
From the inside out...
Until I am only a shell...
A shell of what I used to be...

No longer a white canvas...
But an oil-stained canvas, no longer able to be used...
Cast aside over and over again...
Hoping one day someone will look past my past and see me for who I am...
What I can do...
Day after day, I wait for someone to pick me up and use me...
But that day will never come...

I will never know the joy of being wanted...
I will never be hung in a gallery for people to gaze at me...

Perhaps I should only be so lucky
To fall off this shelf and break...
This shelf that they have put me on...
Perhaps if I break, they will throw me out...
Out into the street...
Perhaps I will then be used to shelter rats from the rain...

This is where I will be...
All because of my blemish...
The blemish only I can see...