release

How do I release ten million moments of beauty? 

Cold raindrops falling from treetops

as we nestled in the heat 

of hot water and new love.

One could say focus on what didn’t work 

and yes, the ten million tiny cuts you left 

on my heart still sting….

But they don’t seem to belong next to the beauty.

I don’t want to reconcile Dr. Jekyll with Mr. Hyde 

Though they both seem to reside comfortably 

within the multitudes of your being. 

I want to grieve the breathtaking beauty 

of our love separately, sacredly. 

To burn it on a viking ship 

sailing south on a glass river, 

purely unburdened by the weight of who 

you became when your trauma took the reins. 

That one, that part of you cruel, calculating 

and more self-righteous than God, 

him I will grieve another way…

With the newly healed softness of a woman 

still wrestling to see the truth of you

as something so different than what she hoped, 

a woman still tentatively empowered

by the knowledge she escaped a fate 

Worse than heartbreak. 

To love, to stay, with someone who justifies

diminishing your soul as a small sacrifice 

for their need to be right….

is an abandonment of self 

with far deeper consequences. 

Thank you for saving me from myself. 

Leaving me was your greatest act of love.