This is not a poem
                          a legend,
                                            or myth.

This is my story.
       This is my rescue.
This is my redemption.

This is a young girl who
wore her shame like chains

                                      it never set her free.

Tugging at her clothes
trying to get the tightness to stop mocking her.

Wanting to be any body but herself,
be in any body but her own.

She wore approval like static electricity,
                 she always c
                                   l
                                 u
                                   n
                                  g
                                        to it.

Even if it never came.

She’d scrawl the words

SOME DAY

in black ink down her arms

so when the other kid’s words
       caused her to hang her head
               she’d look down and remember

some day is one day closer.
some day is just one day closer.

She learned to carry herself like a flagpole,
                                                   it’s all she had out there.

Until she met Him.
He who canoed about her arteries and
wrote books about the things she couldn’t see in herself.

He who gave her someday, everyday.

Who showed her how to break the chains of shame.

Who told her the reason her clothes might feel a little too
tight, was because they couldn’t stand to be too far away from her.

She stopped hearing others insults and only felt His love.

His name?

His name is Jesus.

He saved me from myself.

I think we poets know best
that these words inside of us
can either be
anchors
or they can be life vests.

Choose wisely.

Someone else’s life could depend on it.