She Was

She Was
The grief encompassed her soul until the elements of her former self were nothing.
Nothing.
Destiny squeezed her guts until she splattered all over the floor.
She was, she was, but now she isn’t, not anymore.
Wait.
Amidst the wreckage of her shattered, twisted dreams perchance a gem remains?
A shred of what was, a stair to climb on, a hand to reach beyond her agony,
clutching what still could be?
Carefully, small slivers extracted of what value they weren’t sure
held up to the light by white coats who thought they knew the cure,
the cure for secrets that had hammered her to her knees
events which paralyzed the frightened child she was before.
Men and women who only added their putrid slime to the illness
then when her hour was up they shoved her through the door.
That of course was just good business, nothing’s free,
no matter how she did implore.
Secrets torn asunder, gaping holes dripping vulnerability,
not unlike her veins the night she’d gashed them open wide.
The dirt, the filth, the grotesque, no longer could she hide.
Naked, restrained, unfamiliar shocked eyes did see and several faces
as familiar as her own beheld the tragedy.
But surely they could have done without, her agonizing screams, her blood, her shouts?
“You have no f…… right, let me die,” she’d screamed that night until no voice remained.
Perhaps that was true, yet they had to consider the fact that she was quite insane.
What else could they do, what else would have been right?
So, they saved her anyway, forced her to breathe another day.
Clothed in anguish and shades of gray, doomed to inhere, she haunts the nights,
a ghost of the woman before, who was, who isn’t, not anymore.
Spirit lacerated, black with pain, red with rage, you would not recognize her aura.
A kaleidoscope of mistrust and betrayal determines her movements.
Such a thin line between yesterday’s grief and hope’s beckoning tomorrow.
One baby step at a time she forges a reality where wounds are but the mortar
between her bricks and angels guard her entrance from Knights in Dirty Leather.
This saddened woman who holds within her a tiny, unhealed girl
this woman who endures the anguish her ignorance invited into her world.
Coloring innocent lives with confusion and bereavement evermore.
She was, she was, but now she isn’t, not anymore.

by Jeanne Marie, 1989