Swim Through the Pain

I didn’t find my way back with grace but with grit – one day, one second, one fear, one tear, one storm at a time.

I stumbled along, dragging the tattered scraps of dreams behind me – pleading, bleeding, and breathing in rhyme.

At times it seemed the world was being washed away in a biblical flood, so blinded was I in my own storm of tears;

At others it was just me – alone, with no home, trembling down to the bone – so haunted was I by unsuppressed fears.

I clutched the conviction that hope follows the storm, until my heart ripped, mind atrophied, and fingers bled;

I denied the inveterate sense that the best was behind me, and that the promise of pleasure was dead.

Though I tried to abide by what this philosophy implied, and to give meaning to the tears that I cried,

I couldn’t force the sun to rise for, whilst being denied, the midnight inside just wouldn’t subside.

I tried to control the chaos, to hide the hurt, to force the wounds to heal, but kept repeating the same refrain

until all I could do was cling to the life preserver of hope, take a deep breath, and swim through the pain.

© 2018 Cristen Rodgers