The Edges

and you’d think I would have this perfected by now. This sadness that sneaks in at night while I’m asleep, it blankets me like steel bars that swear to feel so soft. But once again, like the story of my life, I am as hardened as I have ever been. It’s something I’ve questioned for as long as I can remember. The way we are capable of breaking our own hearts. But maybe that’s just me, alone in the devastation of ripping myself apart until there’s nothing left other than my heart in a million pieces. So I sit with these pieces and hold them close. Analyze the edges of each one to see if there’s an answer to the way it hurts. There never is. Maybe I’m punishing myself for not having this puzzle of me mastered. Maybe this chaos that runs wild through my blood is something I created and for the life of me, I cannot let it go. Or maybe it’s the chaos that refuses to unchain me from its clenches. Either way, it feels like driving the wrong way on a one way street, and I can’t see the head on collision in time to save my own life. My rear view mirror is filled with regrets that follow close behind and the road ahead is too far for me to see. I don’t know the way to the future that promises better days, because I cannot get out of this quicksand. It swallows me whole and spits me out until I’m filthy with wishes that will never come true, no matter how many times I ask them to. I am bitter in the cold of this night where everything was beautiful when I closed my eyes. Then it wasn’t anymore. And maybe I’ll never know how to kick the blanket off when it comes for me in the dark. Maybe I will never know the way to where the light is or how to believe it if I ever do see it. But I want to. So, I keep driving… hoping to find the place where my heart doesn’t stay in pieces.

-Stephanie Bennett-Henry

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