MAKING AMENDS WITH THE PAST

I hid my wounds behind words and let my blood dry out on pavements in metaphors. Back when the days were dark yet the sun burned my skin to a crisp. Dark skin turned charcoal and heart beat only when the flesh was starved. Now a new dawn has arrived and stitched lacerations become scars, the past has become a hidden treasure. I remember it but I cannot find it in between these ink stained pages. I need visions to help me name these scars.

Healing comes in waves and even when the wounds come to a close and the scars begin to appear, fading only begins when the scars have names. Your new consciousness birthed from the painful falls demands a new name. Only if you recognize it and let it be beautiful will it shrink into the pebles that cover your walk way. Stones for your climb towards the high Kilamanjaro that are only found in the past. Which is why we must look backwards to move forward and tell the stories of our bites. Scrutinize our current selves to find the ugliness that birthed our beauty.

Yet the past has a way of taunting you. Of replaying the humiliation you felt in the moment you were pathetic and weak. Your fabric was woven from the times you’d rather forget. So sometimes you graze through the entries you inked onto a page in your journal and with full understanding you adopt a state of confusion. You pretend you don’t know you were weak and you don’t name that scar weakness. You pretend the metaphors are too deep to comprehend now and so you ignore them and the scar never fades. Slowly it begins to corrode and open again as you move.

So stare deeply into the past and begin your unrequited romance. You know you learnt to protect yourself from past harm that has become dry bones now. Write names and throw them into the fire. You know you could do with the clear skin.

*~*

HM