Poem: Healing

I have all these words in my head right now that I can’t write. All these thoughts and stories and images that are just unable to be said. I hate when that happens.

And then there are the words and phrases that just pop into my head, that get written suddenly on scraps of paper only to be lost in my purse, or stuck between notes for neuropsychology, or engulfed in the 643 pages of the qualitative research manual. Sometimes, entire poems just fall onto the page. Like this one from a few days ago—I was taking a walk, and by the time I got home it was almost entirely composed in my head. I sat down, typed it out, changed a word or two a few days later. It’s one of those poems that doesn’t make 100% sense to me, but the feeling is right, so it was written. It’s not a masterpiece, but I’m not looking to write masterpieces, and honestly, it comes as close as I can to where I’m at right now. As close as I can to putting a voice to the thoughts in my head.

Healing

Beer bottle smashed
in hundreds of pieces
glistening in the sunlight.

Thrown against the bricks
trashed
by some drunk guy
high
on the power of drunken entitlement
and poor decisions.
Too broken to consider fixing
too sharp to consider cleaning
no ocean to wear down the jagged, cutting edges,
he unknowingly left
a broken, non-reflective mirror on the pavement,
shimmering,
like it could be
something beautiful.

Perhaps this
is what healing
looks like.