The Return
I left with nothing but silence.
The kind that echoes in an empty house in a storm,
after screaming winds and crying clouds have gone.
Leaving broken doors and cracked windows,
the last, cruelest, final goodbye.
I always thought love meant molding myself to fit inside someone’s idea of me,
but I outgrew the corners of your love.
Where your words yearned to keep me small-
shackled in your toxic embrace and desolate castle.
I danced barefoot through the ruins, across jagged stones and shattered glass,
aching with the weight of the love I gave you…
Softly,
like a fresh breath through dew soaked morning leaves,
she called to me, beckoning me back:
the girl I lost, buried beneath all of my ‘I’m sorries’ , the almosts, the excuses.
She didn’t ask where I’d been, only opened her arms and showed me that I was already whole.
She whispered the softest reminders,
no vows, no promises, no chains-
only the burning, raging silence, a quiet sonnet
that I am enough
and I always was
Now when I speak of love,
I speak of her.
When I speak of home,
I speak of coming home to her.
To myself.