Child, It's Okay To Break
Child, it's okay to break.
Go ask the trees.
They've been through a few ice storms themselves.
And, yes, sometimes the lightning
mistakes your unicorn for a lightning rod
and strikes it like a drone out of the blue
when no one's home but you on a Friday night
because you're ashamed to go out
for fear of people seeing what your boyfriend did
when he came down on you like the Leonids.
And I've seen how you've tried
to craft tiaras out of broken chandeliers,
how you've sat late into
the darkest hours of the night
alone at the kitchen table
trying to pick up the pieces
and try to put them back together again
like a jigsaw of your battered reflection
in a shattered mirror that cracked
more like a fortune-cookie than a koan.
And, yes, I understand how hard it is
the more he's false to you
to have to be true for the both of you
to keep the dream alive
of something nurturing, something
the way you imagined it would be
for you and your son and his misunderstood father.
And it feels like a wasted sacrifice to the wrong god
when you realize for all the pain you've suffered
you're just a pyramid
trying to do social work with quicksand
that keeps getting kicked in your face.
You've been pouring a mirage
into a bottomless cup of emptiness.
And you're afraid of your own happiness
as if you were raising the shadow of its assassin
to follow it everywhere like a personal diary.
And isn't it true you've learned
to shred your joys in secret
like an embassy that abandoned you
when you asked for sanctuary
like a candle in a storm
and they suggested there was nothing
that could be done for you or your son
or your misunderstood boyfriend
but blow the light out
if you want to see better in the dark
what you're running from. Denial,
rejection, self-recrimination, self-disgust
at how much bad meat your wishing well
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poem by Patrick White
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