Kiersten Dolecki
Do not tell me flowers have blossomed from where I have been wrongfully touched,
I know there aren’t flowers. It’s just skin, it’s always been my skin.
I’m tired of making collages, so that maybe, just maybe, my trauma will jump out the pages.
Maybe she’s hoping some hidden meaning will be in those photos,
But they will only ever be pictures I cut out of the latest magazine.
She cannot undo the scars on my back,
She cannot undo “flowers” that have blossomed.
She cannot go back in time and change the fact,
That the word “no” excited him more than the word “yes.”
But I think that’s okay, for in the morning the sun still rises and the birds still sing,
Their songs battling the clutches of the silence that guides my grieving mind.
I don’t grieve for me, I grieve for the kid in me that I have lost.
I grieve so heavily that the wind and the rain look for that kid too.
Yet I lay in my dimly lit room, where blankets protect me from the demons under my bed.
They grasp at my feet, begging to pull me under, but I won’t go,
I’ll never go. Because I still have legs who walk me towards greatness.
I still have a heart who aims to encompass all.
I will never go because I am needed. I am worthy.
I am the love that so many people aim to have, and I have come way too far.
I am here because of all the things I did for myself.
I am here despite all the things they never did for me.
I hope they know that when you shatter something,
Gluing the pieces back together in a different way can make it all the more beautiful.