I’d lost my Faith so long ago

I began wondering if I’d ever even had it to begin with

And at the moments I needed someone to blame or to hate, I questioned God

Why couldn’t it have been someone else?

Someone ugly?

Someone forgettable?

Someone replaceable?

Someone else?

Even me!

Why her?

I started thinking death was the only thing I could be certain of

Grief doesn’t ever get easier

Grief doesn’t ever heal

It does however become a part of you

Or to the contrary, a piece of you

That’s lost forever

A dark hole

A bottomless pit

Never to come back from

Never to be filled

Never to heal

Never to get easier

Just. Always. There.

Just. Always. Gone.

Maybe they say “Survived By”

Because that’s what we’re doing

Just surviving

One moment to the next

One breath in

One breath out

Get through the mo(u)rning

Get through the night

Get through one day at a time

But each moment

Each breath

Each morning

Each night

Each day

It also feels like a part of me is dying over and over again

Barely able to breathe, but alive none the less

Maybe I’m surviving

But maybe I’m not surviving her at all

No peace.

No sleep.

It hurts in my chest every time I breathe.

I got dressed in the dark.

I couldn’t even brush my hair.

It doesn’t feel right…

To do anything at all.

He didn’t want me until I got better

But you wanted me even when I was fucked up

Her heart broke a little with each grievous goodbye

And healed a little with every touch of a new soul

Everyone she had loved had broken her a little differently

And everyone who had loved her

Put back the pieces of her heart

Each in their own special way

She was a work of art

A beautiful and unique masterpiece

A kaleidoscope of stained and broken, love and pain

At the end of the day

When the high and the drunkenness wear off

And we return to our lives

To deal with our sorrows

Poetry alone is the one thing

That feels good about what hurts

She had witnessed something truly majestic

It could only best be described

By the tears that danced silently

Down her freckled cheeks

If a night could be measured by the ocean…

I haven’t slept a single drop…

In a very long time…

Like unwanted visitors appearing in my dreams,

waking me in the earliest hours of morning.

Memories of footsteps or voices or trauma.

Flashbacks of moments long and forcibly forgotten

haunt me like glowing eyes in the dark.

A fist raised in anger like the burning of my skin

when the hair rises on the back of my neck in your presence.

Reaching through your soulless being

in a selfish attempt to grasp and devour what’s left of me.

My light will not be dimmed under the shadow of your darkness.

I will not be dragged to hell by your cold, heartless hands.

I refuse to fear you.

Your hollowness cannot consume my wholeness,

even the best attempts have failed.

I command this space to remain holy

and demand you never return.

I’ve shut the door and denied you entry.

You do not belong nor are you welcome here any more.

Go away. Go away from me.

You are nothing to me but empty, lifeless, gone.

I’ve fought near to the death against your chaos and certain destruction.

I’ve treaded in despair, barely choking hope from my drowning lungs.

I’ve held tightly to Joy and Peace

until my fingers bled from the grip of desperate survival.

And I will never let go.

I will never again sit silently

while my spirit extinguishes within my shackled bones.

“I wanna live!”, My soul screamed,

sparking flames from my final drop of sanity and last  morsel of hope.

Burning no rage in my heart toward your shallow, evil existence,

but igniting fiery passion and fierce determination

to soar, thrive, and go on loving others deeply.

You’re no longer the ghost that haunts me,

no longer anything at all.

Only dead and gone. Only dead and gone.