Louise Spence

Sometimes I struggle to understand when I stopped being enough for everyone. 
I haven't changed. I am the unmoving statue, dressed in silver or gold and only my skirt blows in the wind. But for a blink of the eye now and again you would not know me as animated, as alive. I am fighting against nature to stay unmoved and it is not a fight I'm winning. 
You are the crowds that swarm around me. You are changing by the day. Your emotions heighten and fall and I can taste it all on you; excitement, fear like salt and a sweet sort of vanilla of innocence. I am becoming lost in the wave of your nonchalance. You think you've seen me before so you pass by without a second glance. You keep going. Everyday becomes a different day and you follow a different path and there'll come a day when you don't even pass by me anymore, when you're on a different street entirely. 


I wish you'd just glance back. Because I guess, after all, I have changed. Just minutely, just barely. As you become a different person, the one who no longer needs me as such a prominent force in their life, the one who is consistent with change and cannot make up their mind, I become the very same. 


But if you look close enough, just close enough, you'll see. Even through the layers of silver coating like tin which serves as my armour, I am afflicted. One single tear sits on my cheek and I wonder, with my whole heart, if you'll look back and see it.