Beauty through Negativity

Why is it so easy to focus on what is wrong with something instead of what is good or positive; is the human brain designed to embrace negativity or is it a learned behavior brought on by the inability to control one’s emotions, or the propensity for self-pity, for woe?

When you wake up in the morning why does your mind go straight to “I wish I didn’t have to wake up” instead of “Wow, I’m so happy to be awake, to be alive”?

One of my goals for the new year is to focus on the positive - to see good in others, to have hope and faith, and to give others the benefit of the doubt. One of my friends said, it is okay to voice concerns or complaints to reach a greater goal but you should do it in a positive way.

While reading over the poetry manuscript I compiled while in school I notice quite a few (what would appear to be) negative themes: distrust, death, jealousy, loss, but I also notice the beauty, the understated sweetness and tenderness that may be overlooked.

Like my poetry, I believe I am positive in an understated, gentle way. I show my gratitude for friendships by doing small acts of kindness, by paying little compliments, by smiling or joking. I think I am more sensitive to other people’s hurting and pain and my writing tends to focus on those emotions.

A friend of mine read the poem (posted below) and commented on the way I had incorporated love into the poem while it may not be so obvious. Despite the gruesome description of the death of a dog, the speaker does not want “you” to suffer, to watch him cry, the speaker wants to take away the pain, to build a nest of safety, a nest of mundane life that is only threatened by fixable things like “tooth decay” (not death or loss).

[Despite the death when you woke me,]

Despite the death when you woke me,
your voice dry and cumbersome
like a piece of toast, my eyelids
heavy like butter. You told me about
the death of your dog and how, that morning
you saw that black pickup crush its skull.
For hours we rearranged
his body on white bed sheets
and sprayed him with perfume
to mask that horrible inside-out
smell of rotting.
Despite the heaving of your chest,
your lungs, your head on my belly,
I don’t want to bury that dog
in the dirt where we grow
cucumbers in summer, where
grass is thick and where you’ll
sit on cool nights and I’ll watch
from the window and wish
you didn’t know how to cry.
Despite the death of the day
and the night and your drool
on my pillow I can still smell
fur and broken bones and the musk
of your neck. I find myself
still cowering in the silk of your paisley
work tie and the warm toe jam at the bottom
of our bed. I want to crawl into that
toe jam nest, into that rainforest
heat of foot steam and cotton threads
and learn to pick it from between
your big and little toes and together
we can build our own warm
tunnel of bodies, of sweat
and tooth decay.