Be Patient With Me

For years,

my words have felt like darkness.

I have been drowning

daily,

in my own thoughts.

Every poem,

every word I have shared,

has carried since type of sorrow.

I have wrestled with my own mind

just to be able

to gather a clear thought

long enough

to put it on a page.

I have written

about grief and hurt,

pain and loss.

I have shared my deepest fears,

and the worries

that keep my eyelids peeled open at night.

I have struggled

with feeling swallowed whole

by the voids

that live inside of me.

I worry that I come across

disheveled.

A silly woman

who can’t seem to get a handle

on her life,

or even reality.

I question

the way you see me,

ever since joy became

a long distance friend of mine.

And perhaps that’s why

my words have been so heavy.

Maybe I have spent so long

writing from the bottom

that I forgot

there was a sky above me.

I have written through the nights

because

they were the hours

I could not outrun.

I have written about breaking

because

I was learning

how to put myself back together.

And you know what,

now that I think about it

there is nothing

shameful about that.

These words of mine

were never born to prove

that I am broken.

They were simply proof that I was here.

Feeling,

fighting,

and surviving.

Still,

I wonder what it will feel like

when my words begin to change.

When my grief becomes softer.

When the nights become quieter.

When joy finally stops knocking

and decides to stay a while.

I wonder

if I will know how

to write about happiness

when it comes.

Will I know

how to hold it

without waiting for it to leave?

Will I know

how to write

about sunlight?

without first telling you

how dark the room was.

Maybe someday my pages will be filled with softer things.

Like,

morning light,

bare feet on warm floors,

laughter that always lingers,

a heart that isn’t bracing for the next thing to break.

Maybe.

Someday, I’m almost sure

my words will become

less about surviving

and more about living.

But for now this is what I know how to write.

The dark.

The ache.

The things that kept me awake.

And you know,

that’s okay.

Because even here in this darkness,

I am still writing.

I am still being patient with myself.

So please,

if you can…

Be patient with me.