It Isn't Always Pretty | A Poem About Healing

HEALING

Samantha Nagel

My house is not an echo chamber for the wind

My lungs are not rose beds

My rib cage has no birds in it.

There are no flowers on my windowsill

The sunlight doesn’t radiate into my soul

And the night sky never whispers.

I have never resurrected the bones

Of the wolves who used to hunt here

I have never been immersed in the scolding cauldron that is my lovers arms

I have never cast a love spell at midnight

Hands up towards the sky

Singing

blessed be.

I have never prayed for forgiveness until my knees grew red

Never forgave another until my heart grew larger

Never bathed in a river in the moonlight

Never cried so hard I saw stars behind my eyelids

Or did I?

How do you know who you are

When your mirror has cracks in it

Broken

How do you know where you’ve been

When your rear view mirror has been shot out

Glass everywhere

How do you know where you’re going

When the map is burning beside you

Laughing

How do you know who your friends are

When that voice tells you they’re all lying

Is it possible to heal

If you’ve never mourned

If you’ve never thrown your fists on the floors and said

Fuck you

To your Creator

To your reflection

To yourself?

Is it possible to heal

If you’ve never cried your water weight in salty tears

If you’ve never reached a calloused hand into your empty chest and resuscitated your barely beating heart

Can we ever expect to rise like a phoenix

If we never light it all in fire

Watching the false self burn and also everything else too

Can we really start again if we never finish our timeline?

Can we really take off our masks and reveal our true selves if we never knew where our face was to begin with?

I am not a portrait on the wall

I was not built to fit into one dimension

My house is not an echo chamber for the wind.