{ finishing project, the end }

first, you have to feel it. then you have to hate yourself

for feeling it. then you have to give yourself permission

to do so many things: to feel, to hate, to forgive yourself.

it takes two minutes to write and twice as many years to do.

so go ahead and give yourself permission for that, too.

the falling apart comes easily, or, not so easily at first,

because i am an expert stoneswoman

and i bricked it all away so tightly that not even a memory

could breathe. but once the wall is broken through,

every stifled grief that's gathered power behind the mortar

bleeds like rivers from the crimson heart of all this loss.

i have tried for six years to put myself back together.

to seal it off again, to bleach the crimes from the floor,

the walls. it's impossible --- you can wipe away the stains,

but you will still smell the iron in your dreams. so 

i am sitting on this broken wall. the blown-out cement

leaves a strange impression on my palms, my hips,

the backs of my knees. but somehow the marks

of this silent war mean more to me

than living unscarred and unscathed.

give me the strength to carry these wounds,

puckered skin beneath my clothes, losses

notched into my bones. give me the grace

to walk the wall, the uncanny ear for lurking

mines, the imperfect healing

that only comes with time.