1.
I’ve been hurt.
Real bad.
No, I’m not trying to compare.
Everyone has a right to honor their own wounds.
And everyone has a responsibility
to go to their pain
and heal it
because hurt is contagious.
It helps to talk about it a bit.
I don’t remember
what happened.
I remember bad things
but I can’t find the memories that explain
it.
I’m sorry.
I always feel like I need to apologize.
I’m a walking apology.
Sorry.
I feel like I need to apologize for being born
but no matter how much I apologize for it
I never feel forgiven
enough
to live
my life.
2.
I’ve been hurt
real bad,
somewhere deep where my mind isn’t allowed to go.
But I feel it
when I try to speak
or dare to try something that would require me to believe I have a right in this world.
I feel it
when it swells up
and spreads through my body and I
deflate
and clench and contract and shrink away
like I’m trying to protect myself from another blow
or just disappear.
I used to use anger to get big and strong
and push everything away
and get enough space to
be.
But after just a few years
I burned through my lifetime supply of rage.
I used to use alcohol and drugs
for the soothing
and the cheap, fast illusion of power,
but each night’s step forward
cost me two steps back.
I finally found myself
but I was miles behind.
3.
So
I stopped taking the edge off.
Now I want to leave it on.
I need it to cut this mystery open.
I’ve spent years trying to give myself permission to cry.
I can do it a little now.
It feels useless trying to squeeze a river
through a little crack.
But I remind myself that
one little crack is all it takes
to bring the dam crashing down
some magnificent day.
4.
Patience.
Persistence.
Patience.
Persistence.
Patience and
persistence
of water.
Water’s ease and assurance, effortless
in awesome weight and power,
in inevitability.
5.
And I will burst through that wall,
taking the spaces that are mine to fill,
with innocent confidence,
trusting nature
will continuously correct my course
as I flow freely into my life,
laughing at my silly self
for ever having been a river
who wanted permission
to join in our ocean.