Small Cures Page 2
what was then.
and what is now.
day five
healing will not always tell you
when she is on her way,
what she will look like,
or how long she will stay,
but like the moon,
she is always coming.
so darling, pull your curtains back,
keep your windows wide open
and every room inside of you unlocked,
healing is coming.
day six
remember this:
your heart is both
your softest place
and your strongest muscle.
it breaks. and beats.
at the same time.
day seven
when you lose a habit,
which became a function,
which became love—
the body will want to replace it.
or put it back in place
almost immediately.
but you take your time.
you let your body know
it can survive without it.
day eight
sit with your pain.
hold its hand.
it is as scared
as you are.
day nine
cry.
put the fire out.
darling, you are still burning.
day ten
whenever you feel
the thickness of guilt
forming in your mouth,
swallow it.
as quickly and as hard as you can.
for the body knows best
how to break it down
into forgiveness.
day eleven
despite all that she’s been through,
the earth keeps on spinning
and like mother like daughter,
so do you.
day twelve
honey, everything.
every. thing.
is happening as it should be.
day thirteen
try to retrace your steps.
go back to the places
where you gave
too much of yourself.
mark them all.
never go back again.
day fourteen
you may both share the same name
and occasionally look in the mirror
and see one another at the same time.
but darling, do not confuse
who you were
with who you are.
day fifteen
the scariest thing about healing
is blowing up buildings.
watching the giant walls
fall slowly. you know hurt.
you’ve lived inside her so long
that you don’t know anything
about being the architect
of your own home.
now, from above the wreckage,
this is the time to learn.
day sixteen
there are towers of hurt
inside all of us.
each hurt
piled on top of the other
some days,
threatening to fall.
some days,
falling.
but you
survived,
and now,
here you are,
standing on top
of your tower of hurts.
look down.
look down.
see how far you have come.
day seventeen
pain doesn’t wilt,
it blooms in silence.
speak it
back into the earth.
day eighteen
before you ever let regret
spend the night—or two—
know that you will not
be able to bury him in the morning.
truth is,
regret is one of the only things
that lives longer than we do.
day nineteen
darling,
even in the riptide of anger,
stay in love.
love drowns anger
every. time.
day twenty
after your lungs take a breath,
you do it.
your lungs breathing
and you taking a breath
are not the same thing.
day twenty-one
the world can
do its best,
and blow
and blow
and blow
but
your fire
is fierce
and lit
inside you.
day twenty-two
forgive them
for what they could not give you.
now,
give it to yourself.
day twenty-three
i hope you learn the soft way
that holding on
to what must go,
or what has gone
won’t make a hero
out of you.
it’s letting go that requires
the most strength.
do it,
and i promise
you’ll draw from muscles
you never knew you had.
day twenty-four
and now
that your hands
are not filled
with another body,
feel yours
for the knots.
then untie
every lie
they ever told you
about you
from you.
darling, please
take your time.
unpick them
as slowly
as they
un
picked
you.
day twenty-five
when your heart
is thirsty:
do not settle
for rainfall.
wait
for the flood.
day twenty-six
honey,
be still. be patient.
peace is always busy
working her way back to you.
day twenty-seven
do you think that the night
ever questions whether the day
will come and swallow her darkness?
do not doubt for a second,
a beginning is coming.
a beginning is coming
to eat all your endings whole.
day twenty-eight
when your loved ones come
armed with plows,
ready and willing to help you
nurture your heartland,
open the door.
let them.
for you can only grow alone
and harvest yourself so much.
day twenty-nine
darling, you mustn’t forget
the heart breaks once, twice
maybe a few times in a whole life.
but one hundred thousand times a day,
your heart pounds,
your heart stays.
day thirty
each morning
ask your heart
how it would like
to be loved
and each day,
do that.
&nb
sp; day thirty-one
only water what comes back.
you cannot force dead flowers to grow.
thankfully,
your smiles
will always be seeds.
plant them,
indiscriminately
and everywhere.
day thirty-two
twice before sunrise, soak
in deep, deep love with yourself.
stay, long enough to cleanse the wounds
beneath the wounds you cannot see.
they are the ones that need it the most.
day thirty-three
write
until you’re not sure
whether the poems are healing you
or you are healing the poems.
day thirty-four
be thankful.
love has beaten you
tender,
as it was supposed to.
day thirty-five
a list of the things you know now:
better.
better.
better.
day thirty-six
take words
and art
and love
and dreams.
and water yourself
daily.
day thirty-seven
honey, beware—there may be storms coming that shake
your branches until you don’t have a leaf left. but never,
never, let them pull you from the roots.
day thirty-eight
tend to the relationship you have with yourself.
first.
last.
always.
III. R E C O V E R Y
years after the fire,
i read somewhere
that trees spend their lives
building walls around
their wounds so
they never spread.
and i couldn’t help
but think how different
our roots would be
if people did that.
nobody ever tells you
that saving yourself,
usually, always from yourself
is the whole story.
we spend our beginnings
and middles
desperately trying
to rewrite the end.
honey,
be kinder to your story.
you are the first
and only draft.
with every apology,
there is a language we learn.
sometimes our scars say things
we will never understand.
and so—
i will say to my daughter
and her daughter,
“see your beauty
without a compliment
or a mirror.”
who taught you
that the value
of a woman
is the ratio
of her waist
to her hips?
or the circumference
of her buttocks
to the volume
of her lips?
your math is
dangerously wrong.
her value
is nothing less
than infinite.
let’s not tell our girls that the most precious thing they own
is a flower between their legs. something they can lose.
something that can be plucked. instead, let’s tell them
that they are sacred gardens. and every flower they grow
in their lifetime matters. and if they should lie under bodies
they one day regret, they should never feel like crushed petals,
too damaged to be healed or to be loved. no one has died.
there is no such thing as a body count. tell them: the most
precious thing about you, has always been you.
our bodies
like land,
crave water
and understanding.
emptiness means
there are places in you
you are not done fully loving.
honey, remember that we are more fiber than flesh.
we fray.
we don’t lose ourselves.
we unravel,
slowly.
pay close attention.
travel yourself first.
the world,
later.
there are too many of us accepting lovers who say:
“i partially love you.”
when you leave,
a new voice
takes your place.
i spend the night whispering
sweet somethings
into my own ear.
it’s true,
there was a time
when a call from you
would make me spring
into full bloom.
your voice would
offer me petals,
and i would scatter
my roots onto the base
of your drums, secretly
hoping to sow seeds
of forget-me-nots.
but please
do not think
that you were,
or ever will be,
my sun.
imagine:
i was a whole
country of love
before you
discovered me.
before you
“discovered me,”
imagine:
i was already full,
i was already found.
they say—
be careful of what you let
into your heart.
it
may never leave.
but,
i survived every one of your goodbyes.
when i am still
and think,
of all the little miracles
happening inside of me—
i
can barely
breathe.
honey, who said that the love of your life
had to be a man or a woman
you haven’t even met yet?
maybe, you are destined to be
the greatest love of your own life.
you could spend your whole life
waiting for the moon to moan your name.
but nobody, nobody can yearn for you
like you.
no, darling.
yo(u) complete you.
fill yourself
with yourself.
when love arrives
it should never say,
am i the only love here?
remember,
you are sacred land.
choose your travelers
wisely.
loving yourself is magical,
but it is not magic.
it is an unremarkable,
necessary decision.
you can’t pour yourself into someone else
and wait for their love to refill you.
listen to the waters.
they will always warn you when
the river you have been left
gasping from,
leads nowhere.
honoring your breath first
is the beginning of everything
and the end of everything else.
you can’t make them stay.
&nbs
p; and no.
you didn’t make them leave.
you are more than more than enough.
and maybe you gave him
more love
than his heart could hold.
honey, what you crying for?
didn’t you know?
didn’t somebody tell you,
a deep remarkable love
should scar you?
when your heart breaks,
the next time you’ll love
either twice as hard
or only with one half.
your soul
doesn’t have bones
for a reason.
find someone
who speaks
to the quietest
parts of you.
and doesn’t say
a word.
if everyone understood your beauty
it wouldn’t be nearly as magic.
poems are trapdoors
to our secret selves.
we bury our dreams
in open graves
and wonder why
they haunt us.