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Healed

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Bone and sleeve, blessed

a thousand times over –

first it enters through the back, a wave

of rare wind flooding the pores, then through the front,

a deeper rush that separates the skin

like rock into sand, making granules, softness

to cup loosely in hands.

 

You never viewed me dressed in my own hues. You tried

with your guilt and pity, clinging to the ruthless rules

of worldly absolutisms, rules void of miracles,

void of the greatness of God. It is not your fault.

 

You were born in a poverty den, surrounded

by uproar and mouths of many hungering siblings.

Violence and servitude, and so many trapped ghosts

filling the stairways, settling

in the corridors, peering through paintings. A home

where spirits latched on to doorknobs, the nails in floorboards,

bred like bugs under pillows, in closed-door closets.

I cannot blame you, later

you earned and kept your independence,

but still the one thing remained your master

like a severe hand coming down, dominating,

throwing cutlery across the room, thrashing

your childlike joy to pieces.

 

My lungs can’t function in that haunted landscape.

I am rising new born, rising with no sense of

separation. I move beyond my temporal bloodlines.

I will not own your wounds as truth. Even still, I love you.

I bless the bell. I bless how far we both have come – new homes,

clean of bad breath and the tormented

tightening-grip of others.

 

Miracles are fish that somehow know

their way through the oceans.

Miracles are stones, glorious as stars,

 

or a rat in winter guided

to a dumpster feast.

 

 © 2018 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

 

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First published in “New Ink Review” April 2018

Three Poems: Allison Grayhurst

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Published in “Synchronized Chaos” May 2018

http://synchchaos.com/synchronized-chaos-may-2018-the-uncanny-incongruous-eerie-and-unexpected/

http://synchchaos.com/poetry-from-allison-grayhurst-5/

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

 

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