The Graveyard

I am guilty of losing myself in pieces nestled closely against all that makes my heart beat in chords that strike veins enough to make it matter. What can I say? Songs like that slice in, rearrange my soul in a way it never can be again, then quietly leave me, gentle as silence but hard like sense you make without words. I let it ruin me. I am not sorry for that. I let it ruin me completely, fallen fetal and pieces broken so jagged, I become a threat to myself, but only until I reach in, hold those pieces, bleed wounds that promise to scar, and I stand again. Eventually I stand again. But I leave the wound open so I can always feel that moment. I visit it like a graveyard at night, where everything is lost, but me, the ghost who brings flowers to all I ever wanted but didn’t get… and I say, it’s okay… it’s okay… you can still love what you cannot hold, even if it doesn’t hold you back. This is how I learned to love myself… haunting my own wounds until they heal with nothing more than my own hands, crossed over my own heart, writing songs carved from my throat that bleed in permanent ink across pages imprinted across trees; I stay in the graveyard on bended knee, holding flowers from the best of me. And nothing was ever a waste, the music says so.

-Stephanie Bennett-Henry

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*Photo Credit: Amy Judd