A Grateful Life Lived

The following is an original poem about healing and repressed emotions. May you find hope in words that remind you to breathe.

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Let it be known
That nobody knows.
Because if they ask, I say no.
If they need help,
I respond. I volunteer to go.

But I think I'm angry
Lightly livid, perhaps?
And it's no big deal,
Except it is.
I'm angry with twenty years of gritted teeth,
Pain that now begs to surface.

My jaw starts to crack.
No. Wait... it's not my jaw.
It's me.
I'm cracking.

How odd to not know who "I" is.
How strange to be unaware, yet unable to hide.
I can't make these limbs move
The folds of blankets slow
Hyperventilating lungs.

Where do people go when they detach?
When there's no vehicle for going, no bridge for coming,
No way of knowing
When a heartbeat will tame.
For in a rush, anger seizes the breakage.
Light.
It flings itself onto the face,
Clawing to be seen–
Featured on the smile of a human in crisis
A girl who never stopped to breathe