Disclaimer: Shiro is not mine. Nah, this was me dreaming he was.
He exudes strength
A sturdy structure for his friends,
A plane which I rely on.
He is everything we needed him to be.
Yet, I know he's not perfect.
Even these untrained eyes of mine could see
Every point, line, plane, and bulk
Defects and impurities that hide within the lattices of his being.
Point
His eyes bare it all.
You can see it in his eyes,
He looks upon the vastness of space and remembers
Remembers a time when this was his dream
But now only vacancy remains
An awareness of reality, but never resignation
Nothing replaces the dreams he had lost
But something forces into the interstices
The spaces between who he is
Loved ones and friends that change him
Small enough to stay there lodged
Into his space and into his heart
Line
Lines adorn his body now
Most are under his clothes and in his mind
but he can never hide the slash on his nose
Where once the skin was smooth and unmarred
Now scars will mark him forever
Under my fingers he flinches as I caress the newer ones
I whisper words of comfort in his ears
Cause I know
There are stories to each of his scars
He tries to forget, his mind is misaligned
Planes of unspeakable encounters edge in his soul
They screw with his soul and dislocate his body
I hold on to his heart, 'cause it's all I can do
Stresses on dislocations make him curl in on himself
They surround him like boundaries
Until he has had enough and pushes back
like an aura it radiates outward
I remember there is beauty in his scars as I card the white tuft of hair on his head
Planar
His external surface is a sum of his defects
When he steps in front of a teammate,
he doesnt want them to feel the pain of the blow
he knows how bad it can get
His morbid jokes are the product of his near death experiences
i'm amazed at how he can easily laugh at the most dire of circumstances
His calloused touch is the result of fights won and lost
of the lives he took and the lives he's saved
I wonder at his dark clothes
The preference for black is laughable twin defect of ours
Despite his difference in experience, we both know
It hides the blood that has turned from red to brown
A feeling of loss that he cannot risk wearing his favorite color
A namesake he chose for himself
Volume
The enemy has processed him
Tore away a piece of him he'll never get back
Replaced the flesh of his arm with metals of their creation
But more than that
They place a notch in him
An insurance
That he'll break when they wish it so
Volumes of sorrow he hides
Pores in his pride and demeanor
He will never let his brothers know
That he is full of voids
And at night, when his self-appointed wards are asleep
He lets me in
I look closely at the tracks of his tears
They cascade down his cheeks like cracks
Exposing new surfaces that could make or break him
I hold him as tight as I can
Together, we cry until the sun comes up
He isn't perfect
He will never be
These defects are innate
Nothing can take them away
But these imperfections
They make him who he is
They are marks of his achievements
Challenges he faced and trials he passed
He has risen every time he fell
He never needed to be perfect
His faults are mine to endear
As he is mine to love.
Story behind the story/poem? Our professor wanted us to write poetry about one of the lecture topics. During this time I was a Voltron trash, and my sleep deprived brain found a muse in Shiro. The following morning I passed a similar work to this one, minus the fandom references. A year and a half later, I found this again while cleaning my onedrive folder. I was about to stack it again somewhere never to see the light of the day, when I thought "Might as well post it on my account, it was never published anyway."
So here it is.