Once you were a little girl,

Stomach bulging over the bathwater,

Damp curls,

And sunlit skies woven into your skin.

You were a doctor, a princess, a dog,

You were the world and all its contents

And you occupied every lovely, reliable niche.

 

Now, in place of scattered stars and lullabies,

Are nights when beyond the quiet film of shock,

The world explodes into hazy nausea.

You understand,

With sickening clarity,

What has happened.

 

I wish I could help you fight the devouring panic

And that you believed me when I told you it wasn't your fault,

I would nullify the "incriminating" details which drove your hate inward.

I don't speak from a hollowed, seperate space.

I've spent my own nights remembering a walk home with jagged, aching steps,

and "honey I just got carried away," and the way I was left on the ground, just lying there,

Immobile

Nonexistant.

But I've also seen how much there is to be joyful for,

People emerging to tame the chaos,

And days which,

Unexpectedly,

Blossomed and unfurled into more than I thought the world could become.

 

I wish you knew

That you are an integral part of the world

It doesn't move against you,

But enfolds you in its serpentine flow.

Shake the crushing fatigue from your skin,

Lift yourself up from darkened corners,

Wring the rage from your body

and dissolve him in that acid.

Define yourself,

Rebuild yourself,

Plant your feet deep in the earth.

 

You are a woman and your beauty thrives beyond anything he can take from you.

 

You are yourself, fortified.