In The Clear

When your wounds turn to scars,
you will speak of them with such courage
you never thought you could have,

and with each word,
you will shed light
to the world, ink-child,
daughter of the sky
with comets that take flight
instead of the other way around.

You are more than what you survived,
and what you survived
will be more than a stack of pages
collecting dust in someone else's attic,
feeding time and those shadows
that only know of haunting.

When you finally heal,
your hands will not only guide
eyes into the gruesome tunnels of your past,
the labyrinth you have learned
to live through for years,
for almost a decade, dearest,

when you finally heal,
even in your sheer existence,
with your breath that knows
how to shatter glasses without
cutting through anyone's flesh,
with those feet that walk amongst these
tectonic plates that tried to swallow you whole
but didn't,
with those lips that were sewn shut but now
unravel and sing, dearest,
when you finally heal,

you will be,
in a miraculous way,
an instrument for healing, too,

a hand that can help
pull all other versions of you in the dark
who know so little of hope and salvation,
of sparks and stars
that shine in all their glorious brilliance,
and look—look forward to this
even though you can't see it yet,
call it faith tucked inside the locket
your best friend gave you
after your last suicide attempt.

This map of brokenness
will become a platform for
a thousand dazzling daybreaks
that will not shake at the thought
of dusk, of sinking, of laying itself
down at the West,
because it has been there before,
and it knows it's not forever,
it knows it will rise again

just as I know you will get through this,
for you've been through the worst
that could happen to anyone alive

yet, you survived,
yet, you are still here,
yet, you are healing.

My dearest inner child,
I am with you. We’ll go
through these woods together
as long as you need. I know
it in my heart – someday,

someday,
we will be in the clear.