Others' Sighs
She lost herself long winters ago, as one might lose a childhood bauble.
The worth of one surely outweighed the other,
but she stumbled on the fulcrum and failed to establish
which was greater in value, and so abandoned both and cascaded.
I found her in the pregnant breath between words,
the velvet space beyond stars when dawn is overdue.
She was hiding among shards of stained glass
and disjointed memories that neither of us could understand,
clinging to the empty frame of a looking glass.
It had proved devoid of hope,
so in a fit of childish rage
she had shattered reflection
and the illusion of perfection all at once.
She was only four years old; it was never her fault.
Still it was tedious and soul-wrenching, gathering the pieces;
I caught glimpses of myself within the tattered waste
and found colors that I never knew existed.
From these fragments we erected a temple in her honor,
a mausoleum of lost innocence and wonder.
It was more beautiful than she could ever hope to be.
(or so she thought)
Meanwhile splintered slivers of hope wedged themselves
between her virgin skin and bitten nails,
driving their points home to the tune of her tears.
You are greater than the sum of these parts.
You are stronger than the one who sundered you.
You are more lovely than the eastern sun
as she twirls 'round Boreas in her splendor.
Patience, child... Aurora comes to free you.
So we toiled through the dark night of the soul,
laboring to piece together our cacophony of colors.
And the raw edge of reality stuck in the throat to cut and burn
when years later we dared to speak the truth:
He raped me, dammit.
Yet we survived the plummet to our credit,
and surrendered a fractured form to sculpt a new and greater likeness:
a pinpoint of light resolute in the darkness.
Like the star she personified when she fell.
copyright 2010 Danielle
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