Falling Apart to Fall Together
She builds me a map of her life.
And she has to give me a diagram of the bruises on her body;
The architecture of her brain and the things she refuses to outright say.
And the pages from her book come to me shredded
I am on my knees for days
Wondering what she wants me to see.
Piecing the pieces of her puzzle-life, her bitter strife,
I wonder "What will I find next?"
She makes me question her, I'm suspicious of her, I hate her, I love her. I want to hold her.
But she still doesn't answer.
I press harder; I think that will work, that she'll unfold the origami paper of her heart if I just ask one more time.
Like maybe she'll tell me the reason to her rhyme,
Like maybe she'll confess to all her hurt, all her crimes.
Like maybe I think I deserve the answer.
"My fault," She cries, "It's my fault!"
She pounds her fists against my chest as it all comes tumbling out,
The good, the bad, the ugly, the horrid inbetween bits, how her life is, with each and every hit.
The thing that's stalked her since the fifth grade, and what her first little friend did with that blade.
Carved it in skin, to keep it from growing thing, "Never Forget."
The horrors past come at me fast,
At the hands of man, woman, and child alike.
Her father and his bruising, her mother and her boozing, and her, always losing.
Her first love and how he broke it, her second love and how he rewrote it,
Her third love who took her ability to commit; left her in the river, bloated.
She came out of that river alive, and re-approached her sex drive, determined to thrive.
Tears in her eyes as she rebuilt her life, she swore it:
