it is time.

you can only walk around
for so long
like a deflated balloon
like a shell of a person.

for a while,
you have no choice.
i mean, these past years,
really, you have been at war.
and you have won.
you have both won.
the marriage has won.

but now you have got to go about the business
of standing up
and breathing
and learning how to walk
again.

you have to pick up the piece of the broken china cups
and picture frames and bicycles.
i bet you never knew that the darkest parts of you
had the power to bend the metal frame of a bicycle.
so you must forgive yourself for that,
for being so strong in ways that are so destructive.

you have to pull shards of shrapnel
from the most tender places;
from your underbelly,
from your finger tips,
from your heart.

and the pulling out,
the healing,
the potential infections . . .
it all hurts, in an odd way,
so much more than when the injury was inflicted
in the first place.

as i said,
for a while,
you have no choice,
but to walk around like a sleepy toddler,
waking up from a nap,
and wandering about
without purpose,
just looking for a juice cup
or a familiar blanket
or a warm lap to sit in
through sleepy eyes.

but now it is time for something else.
something more.
time to enter the hollow tomb of self
and with only the light of a match,
look for any hieroglyphic you can find.
look for any hint of who you are,
of who you were.
to take trace remenants and clues
and begin to rebuid,
refind,
rediscover
the girl you were
the woman you were becoming
(before you began about the business of
bending bicycles and breaking china cups
with the bile of your words)
and find a way to slowly fill this flimsy shell
up
once
again.