I said the words for the first time last night.
A decade of grieving what was lost coming to a reluctant halt.
I sat with wet eyes & a quiet voice, before silence broke, expecting it to be:
Indifferent. Ugly. 𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘭𝘺.
The reality was that staying quiet felt like strength, while speaking threatened fear,
so started years
pretending the girl born
on dead flowers & wet grass
was the one who lay buried,
whose fight didn’t last.
I wore her skin to school,
their cheers a dreadful thing,
like urging a corpse to dance and sing.
I felt thorns replace roses that once flourished from within,
& I wondered about the dead girl
& what could have been.
Wilting came in small ways,
in the choices I made,
in how long I stayed.
In the scar along my thigh, when I would take a lighter & cry as my skin burned & stomach churned & demons watched silently,
unperturbed.
How long was I 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥 to last against the howling winds that took me back -
To when I awoke painfully in a dying garden,
mind hiding what it knew as I bargained,
& the first thought of many laughed and hissed,
“𝘐'𝘷𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴.”
How could I have explained that after years of fighting for a dream,
it still felt like God was hiding it from me?
Perhaps disgusted at what He saw within -
even though, not once, 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘐 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘏𝘪𝘮?
How could I have explained I’d still gasp for air like I did that night,
when a boy with a man’s hands crippled my flight,
destroying who I’d worked hard to become,
innocence taken,
as I wondered where the blood came from.
I spoke these words for the first time last night, tearing overflowing in my roommate’s eyes.
We sat in a silence I didn’t think could be:
Compassionate. Beautiful. 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨.
And decade of grieving what was lost came to a final halt.
My voice rose as the truth finally met my ears,
eyes opening without tears -
in awe of a new world as the weight of the old faded with a sigh…
Feeling inside
something new blooming
for the very first time.
