Take a photograph,
Let it develop slowly,
Patience is virtue.

Bleeding from my lips,
breathing in tortuous love
when I'm all alone.

Sometimes the past comes
and its earth-shattering sound
vibrates through your skull.

Finding ways to heal
It takes time and reflection
Isolation helps.

To paint?
To write?
To make a cup of coffee
in the broad morning light?

To sing?
To create?
To have something tangible
created in the wake?

Of tragedy
Of plague
Of a sickness we aren't sure we have
we quarantine because reason is vague?

The stardust I came from
is no match for the explosion
in the universe that I'll create.

Trauma from the past
knows how to enter itself
back into your life
when you least expect it,
causing the dominoes of your
sanity to collapse under the
societal pressures you've housed
your mental state into, silently
praying there will be a glitch in
gravity that will cause all motions
and bad thoughts to cease, leaving you
with a state of uninterrupted peace and
numbness to shield your remaining
innocence and childlike mannerisms away.
Even if it's just for a second.