Dirge of Innocence
I’ve never been someone for whom hope is hard to come by.
Even after trauma, and all of its sad, exhausting, redundancies.
I am too tired to list them at the moment.
Besides, you know them.
Besides, I want to speak to a different trauma.
A wound that has scabbed over, but if I scrape it against the wall just right, a bright burn.
How to speak about the illusion of love and its offices.
How to describe all that you gave to a life as hollow as a foxhole with no bottom.
Just imagine it.
Shoveling all the love you had inside you, over and over again, and filling a hole in the earth.
But there was no there there.
How on earth can you believe in the return of love.
When you have finished grieving the foxhole of falsehood.
Scratch that.
There is no finishing grief, silly child.
You must also, with some other strength unknown to you, grieve the self.
The one for whom hope was always attainable.
If you can, love the self who dared to believe in love without evidence.
Love the rebellious love that lived inside of you, despite all the scars swimming beneath skin.
Hold fast to that silly child.
I promise you—you are still there, waiting around the bend.
