III

Staring at the ceiling,
its paint split like a riverbed.
Each crack a growing fissure
of a feeling that I dread.
The tremor overcame me
as an uninvited guest,
born of an imagined lack
I never could confess.

I recall a summer wedding
and the music’s pulsing drum.
You stood as my anchor
while I felt it all grow numb.
Beside the boy I had promised
to cherish and to hold,
but what could have been given
when a pair can’t be made whole?

I was brittle in those days,
oh, so easily resigned.
I mistook the black for cover,
mistook silence for a sign.
I tailored many faces
I believed I ought to be,
and so I wandered, weary,
far from any sense of me.

May sang to me of tough love.
I was betrayed by my own hands.
I buckled to the tile floor
to pay what haste demands.
The echo of my heartbeat
rose and fell like something wild.
Dolorous came to seize me
like a spirit once exiled.

Is there a lesson in the breaking,
in the terror of the fall?
A violent solemn reckoning
that answers to no call.
Are we shaped by longing,
by a shade we might outgrow—
the toil of steadfast labor
of becoming the unknown?

I was fragile for a spell,
but the light was drawing near.
I could not reach the courage,
yet, you brought it to me here.
And the one that I so often lost
is the one I plan to keep,
a soul unveiling slowly
from the dark into the deep.