I am a war torn casualty hopelessly lost in an unfamiliar landscape.
I pick myself out of the rubble of a crumbled existence,
casting aside the well worn masks of my own invisibility.

I am stopped in this breathing place,
my quiet cocoon of safety
where unpredictability does not dwell,
but neither here does life,
neither here do I.
The silent screams that well up inside me never find their way out
and my door remains locked, the world shut out.

"The war is over,"  I try to convince myself.

This is my holding pattern.
I wonder will I ever feel brave
enough to unlock that door and
venture forth into life again?

Who am I without my captor's angry lies,
that cruel mouth that formed words defining me,
those rough hands that molded me
into the shapeless form of his invention?

I never thought to tuck myself away in safety,
hide myself in a tiny crack, or between pages of a book,
my treasured keepsake that I could run fingers over later,
smiling and whispering, "Yes, I know you."

No, I abandoned myself years ago,
left myself a motherless child.

The hands on the clock go round and round.
I dig through rubble behind a locked door,
searching for the girl I abandoned long ago
on the battlefield of disenchantment.