The Long Negotiation

My mind keeps a courtroom.

Evidence stacked high,

each mistake marked with neat handwriting and cold ink.

My heart is no lawyer,

it bleeds too quickly, and trembles at the sound of my name spoken softly.

They argue over me, as if I am not sitting here, between them.

The mind says: You should have known better.

The heart says: You didn’t. You couldn’t. You tried.

I replay my choices,

the way some shattered glass still catches light, even after the break.

The mind keeps tally.

The heart keeps time.

And somewhere between sentence and surrender,

I take my own hand,

the way you might take the hand of someone who has just confessed that they are tired of running.

Because;

forgiveness doesn’t arrive as a trumpet,

but as doors I thought to be locked,

opening slowly,

hinge by hinge,

until I can step through and find myself waiting on the other side.