This morning I made my shield.
Last night I knew it must be.
Laying there after,
I knew.
Never ask a friend in the sheets
what you mean to them.
Especially not after.
But foolish I was,
yet this fool turned pain to wisdom.
I woke and dressed, looking back with an ache in my heart.
It always comes back to this:
my vanity,
my need to be important,
to someone, some man
rather than myself.
It is the gap in my armor.
I strode out into the yard,
there I sacrificed myself to myself.
The blood painted the wood
the color of my heart.
I nailed it with heartbreak and rejection,
and polished with old tears,
it shone.
Battle ready, fear left me.
The shield was new
but the strength was old.
Upon my arm it would ever hold.