Love and Wreckage

CW// SA

I know that the last time we talked you asked me if I could become more weightless. The history of violence against this body was too heavy to hold. You figured maybe I could fashion myself into a redemption arc. Forgiving. Free. Better / like before.
And god knows I tried.
For your sake. For mine.
But I was too broken
into / up / down /
repeatedly
not okay.

Survival is not a one time ordeal. I wish they would have told me that in the beginning.
But I’m starting to think salvation isn’t either.
I wish they told me that too.

All that is broken will stay broke
into / up / down /
open
in anticipation for more life.

And life, it is relentless. I am not naive. Or, I am committed. At least to today on my way to tomorrow.
I don’t know how to make myself lighter. But I do know that I am light.
I wish you would have stuck around to see that.
I wish you would have stayed so I could tell you myself.

But in the end this isn’t about you who left. This is about me. And this body that has refused to quit even when I wanted so badly to leave it behind. This is about me slipping back into my skin even though I wasn’t sure my skin wanted me back. A poet. Stripped. Unable to romanticize the pain and not wanting to either. This is a returning to a crime scene that I refuse to let have every part of me. Praise. There is still much to love in the wreckage.
Me.