You are a goddess,

and I am a simple

being, trembling beneath

the weight of your presence.

I believed you would heal me—

wrap me in silken light,

stroke the knots of my sorrow

until they unraveled into grace.

And you said,

“Sure, let’s begin.”

But what I meant wasn’t this.

What I thought was gentleness

wasn’t the fire you lit in me.

I thought healing would be

soft and sensual,

a balm against my bruises,

a dream made flesh,

a cocoon for my desires.

Not this—

this unmasking,

this shattering of the mirror

that held the fragile portrait of my persona.

Not this pain, raw and unrelenting,

flaying my illusions one by one

until I stood exposed,

naked in your gaze.

You loved me in the discomfort,

held me in the discovery,

kissed the breaking open

as though it were a blessing.

And perhaps it is.

Perhaps healing isn’t soft,

but sharp, jagged, alive.

Perhaps the only way to live

is to be pierced by it,

to be stripped of every lie

until the truth shines

like a wound,

like a gift.

And so I stand,

shivering in this unmaking,

no longer sure where I begin

or end.

Your hands are not kind,

but they are sure—

sculptor’s hands,

breaking me apart to rebuild

a thing I cannot yet fathom.

“Trust,” you whisper,

though it sounds like thunder.

And I do,

though the trust tastes of blood,

though it feels like falling

into endless sky.

Your eyes burn

with something ancient,

and I realize—

you are not here to save me.

You are here to remind me

I was never broken,

only buried

beneath the weight

of my own forgetting.

Larson Langston