Hurting and Healing

I did not choose to lose you

To let you go violently into

That good night.

I did not choose for my heart to stop

When yours did

When paramedics covered you up

And stopped trying

To fix you.

I am stuck now

In the breaking.

You, on our living room floor

A photograph I cannot erase

In the place where you once

Wrestled my brothers and

Held us tight.

The world is an ache and a burning

I ask, does anything good remain?

Everything, even breathing

A burden.

I did not choose to enter the furnace

The fiery destruction of all

I hold dear.

But I decide what becomes

Of these embers.

Cleansed instead of charred,

I rise, a phoenix,

Renewed by flames I did 

Not kindle.

I will never regain my past self.

It is not possible to return to her

For she was buried

When you were.

But maybe her heart is not meant 

To be mine anymore

Maybe this refinement

Shapes me from coal

To the diamond

That brightens the world 

Around it.

Maybe this is how I flourish.

Not with you, but

Because of you. 

Because of who I have to be

Now that you are gone.

This is the hurting, Dad.

This is the healing, too.