The Bruise

 

I'm up early

earlier than the day...

black turning to blue

waiting for the yellow of morning,

like a bruise about to heal.

Isn't that funny?

"A bruise about to heal".

It doesn't just heal.

It turns from black to blue

green to yellow

to something just off from your skin tone.

And if deep enough

there is no healing.

Just an atonement through forgiveness

and an understanding that is yours alone

to plaster over the wound.

And yes,

that band-aid makes you well enough to continue the linear direction of life

without a backward glance,

except for those thrown over your shoulder

every day.

New Day Darning

                                                                                                                            

In my mind

I can see a hand

stitching, like my grandmother's,

her weary eyes squinting

in concentrated effort.

The thimble makes the slightest

yet completely satisfying

*tink*

rhythmically against the needle’s eye.

I fear there’s not enough line to finish

and there will be one too many knots

and stops and starts and tired tired tired.

Yet the thread pirouettes,

reversing with the same planted spaces,

familiar X patterning coming to roost

along the hopeless halves of a torn dream

surgically reuniting

whether they like it or not.

In my mind

I have the power…

my grandmother's chalky bones

scattered somewhere,

gathering

into an intravenous potion

injectable through that needle

darning a broken heart

that will not mend.

Yellow

It's a new wound on an old scar.
Once it heals
no one will know you've been cut open
and emptied out once again.
There will be nothing to show for this egregious pain
but the new way you will walk back into the world...
wearing, not hiding, a yellowing bruise.

In the moment of impact,
even the hours and days and months and years
past ground zero,
it would be hypocrisy to paint something so dark
with a sunny disposition.

Dark is dark
and pain is never yellow.
That color does not exist when a blade slices fresh
into all you thought was closeted away.
But on the edge of healing
it returns.

Yellow rips doors off hinges
breaks locks
melts chain.
It has muscle.
It's a bad-ass color you mistake for a daisy.
Imagine the sun...the moon...the strength!

Yellow is the beam
that turns all your shadow euphemisms
into real monsters.
But it's no chicken.
It stays in the room
surrounding everything...
and you, dizzy with the need to inhale,
will gasp.

Bathed in a color so long missing
you will fight to keep it.
You will fight to be light,
with light,
in light.
You'll fight like hell
ripping a new wound into an old scar.
And how much it hurts won't matter near as much
as the bloody way you will walk
back into the world
a delightful shade of hope.


(Sometimes we receive a new emotional wound, only to realize it has a history that we've been wearing like an old sweater. It seems comfortable and even comforting until it gets ripped off like a scab. Underneath is that still-tender place that really needs the healing.)

Pearls and Possibilities

The story is no longer unique. It's as tired as the seat of my favorite blue jeans. Abuse - Adoption - Molestation - Irreconciliation. And yet...it was a unique opportunity I had to photograph this wedding...to discover that two broken families had made their way back to each other.

When the bride was five years old, her family attended my church. Her father, Jack, had a brother....Sam. I became very good friends with Sam and his wife. Through the course of our friendship I discovered that, like myself, Sam was also adopted. He CHOSE to be adopted. When they were in high school, Jack and Sam were best friends. Sam's mother was a beast....a wretched woman who abused him in many ways. Jack's family offered to adopt him, and Jack took their name. They took him in as their own son, and two kids who always felt like brothers, now were. Sam and Jack both fell in love with beautiful women and had beautiful sons and daughters.  The two families were very close, spending holidays together, vacations and daily interactions.

When Jack's daughter was five, Sam's son babysat her. They were alone. He molested her. The family broke apart. The son was labeled, the daughter was broken. The friends, turned brothers, became nothing...as dead as if they had died. Sam was no longer considered family for a myriad of complicated reasons. It was sad to watch. A decade went by with little or no contact other than police and attorney's and whatnot. Anyway, that's as short as I can make a long story. Eventually there was a hand out, and a hand receptive, and the two families started speaking again.

Saturday, Jack's daughter got married. Sam and his wife attended. Sam's daughter photographed the wedding with me. I am immensely happy for this bride, that on this day she is reconciled and the brothers are reconciled. Jack's son is absent, but that's not really the point.

Healing is possible.
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