2-10-14

it took 1 year.
one year and I was
f r e e.

no more open wounds.
no more pain. No
more stolen blades pressed
to tender, pink flesh.
No more blazing desires of
death
by chemicals compacted
into a small pill, labeled
FOR MEDICAL USE ONLY.

Three
Hundred and
Sixty-five days.

My wounded flesh
Was healing.
My broken thoughts
Were mending.
My tattered mind
Was recovering.

52 weeks and
counting.

I took
One less sip of
That intoxicating liquid.
Each day I took
One more breath of
hope

Three hundred and
Sixty-five days I
Struggled
To mend myself
from a lifetime
of misery.

For three-hundred and sixty-five days,
for fifty-two weeks, for twelve months, for
eight thousand seven hundred and
sixty-six hours, for all those minutes
and all those seconds I spent trying.

I slowly improved.

And in one, fleeting moment,
Those twelve months of mending,

V a n i s h e d .

Day 364

My head was heavy
With profound thoughts and
My heart was brimming
With unwavering love
As two pairs of passionate
And hungry eyes stared
into the other.
The intensity of yearning,
Of love.

Day 365

I, what was left of me,
Crouched to the floor
Picking up
The shattered remnants of
My heart.
Not a silly girl picking up
failed love.
Not a girl mourning
The loss of a boy
But a girl gathering broken shards,
Broken shards of tender love.
Shards of happiness. Of life.
Shards of passions
And shards of light.
A memory of warmth.
A thought of hope,
Of being whole.

And each piece of life,
Each moment of love
tore my fingers,
nicked my flesh.
And I knelt to the ground
plucking each little piece.

My thoughts lingered
On your goodbye
Not a silly girl with
A broken heart
Just a girl who
finally realized
she was not
enough

and that day I pieced
myself back together.
I put a piece here
And a piece there,
Not quite finding a
Place for each shard.
Others were missing.
Not shards of you, love,
But shards of me from you.

For 365 days
I had not mutilated my body.
I had not uselessly abused
my insides with alcohol.

But months after
Saying goodbye
And endless days
Of living in fragments
With missing pieces
I poured that glass of
Clear liquid.
I filled my lungs
With smoke.
I drowned out my thoughts
With noise,
And I put nails to skin
and pressed
harder and harder
and harder,
physically masking my
pain.
Drowning out my thoughts
And replacing
an unwavering emotional pain
with a tangible physical pain.

And right then
All I worked for,
was gone.
It took just one moment
For everything to

Shatter

And right then
Three hundred
And sixty-five days
Were gone.
365 days were
nothing.