desperation made you

wild enough one night to dig the biggest knife out of your kitchen drawer, grip it tight, and hold it high above the soft veins of your left wrist. One strong strike. The fleeting pain it would cost your body would be nothing held against the agony that had raged so long in your heart.

Graceless, you'd tumbled off the pedestal you carved yourself. So many ups, so many more downs, these eddies in your river that now threatened to pull you under. Hurting and healing — you were far from it —

--Like the first time you scraped your knee on the pavement, saw your insides revealed raw and red, before the pain faded into a scar so softly pink.

--To the first time you felt true love, when you finally met someone who made you feel safe

and how it felt like suffocating in the dark when you lost them.

--When you learned how good it felt to be taken care of, just before betrayal and then, oh, how it faded.

--These shapeless hurts so much deeper than flesh you could watch heal.

--These wounding acts that laid bare how gentle your heart really was.

--You wanted so much to be forgiven that you never stopped to ask just how much you should forgive.

--Or why you refused to give yourself the same grace you offered so freely to others.

At the peak of your pain, you made up your mind. You drove the blade down. One strong strike, into granite counter. The tip would be forever bent, for which you would always be grateful.