30 Days of Poetry

The Shadows Behind Me

A poem

I didn’t always know where my heart was — I used to think it was a person, someone to hold me, someone to bring me the joy I couldn’t conjure for myself.

But people came and went and they took what they could, they grabbed the pieces of soul I gave to them and made little souvenirs tourists bought for 99 cents.

And yet, somehow, that did not end me.

Where did this stubbornness come from? Why did I resist the wicked call darkness kept on hollering at me?

It was so inviting, it is still sometimes, to think of making everything end, here and now, to sleep forever and never again worry about how and when to find that elusive piece of bliss I kept thinking would make me whole.

I was disgusted by my sadness.

Why wouldn’t she let me be? Why keep on sequestering my heart? Why couldn’t I just smile like an idiot and pretend everything was fine just as it was?

But there was hidden magic in my sorrow — she was a compass, a map to where my spirit dwelled and stewed in remorse.

I see now the deep contrast — the light in the dark, despair and delight, two sides of the same coin I flip every day I live.

And today, I bathe in the glow my life has become and the shadows behind me are nothing to fear, just old friends that, kindly, come along on the road.

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