For never have I wished for amnesia so bad
how wondrous would it be
to consign it to oblivion.
The past is a phantom that haunts my steps;
I wish it would dissolve,
leaving the scars that whisper.
These days I wake up before dawn, stitching myself together,
believing the dark might swallow me whole
yet morning pries my eyes open.
It hurts,
but I remain stable.
I play my soliloquy in front of the mirror;
who knows how much it hurts to be sentient.
For once I wished I hadn’t seen these days,
but the reasons keep me awake.
And my beloved,
We don’t chase those reasons
we chase the fire and the armor,
till the end.
[Even when reality feels unkind, you still have to wake up.
Wake up not to deny the darkness, but to outgrow it.
Everything that happens in our lives carries a reason.
We don’t always need to chase that reason
we need to shape it into something that strengthens us.
As Emily Dickinson reminds us in There Is Another Sky,
there is always an inner world untouched by storms.
Sometimes the answer isn’t escape
it’s tending to the quiet garden within.]

