After

My head cracked open
 one ordinary morning—
 no warning, no grand symphony,
 just a thousand silent fractures
 shards catching old screams, faded memories 
 of songs sung, broken into long ago.

and all the pieces just... hung there,
 like a city after the sirens have stopped—
 ruined, but somehow still standing
 still pretending,

 to envelop the sun streaming in this day.

I sit here in the wreckage,
 loving (or missing?) you who live in every splinter,
 your impersonal generosity to strangers
 hating your indifference
 But none of the conversations or thoughts left for me.

loving you, the only arms I knew,
 hating that it was your arms casting me out over the balcony, 

his gentleness, his jealousy, 
 his apathy, his fierce loyalty.

I hate you for handing me the hammer,
 this anger to smash every connection to smithereens
 I sit among them,

But what good can come from trying to piece 
 the glittering shards of whys slicing my breath,
 to bleed over and over again for closure
 for memory(ies) are created in different minds
 who do I grief for? who do I blame?
 you? me...us?

wallowing in this aching gravity,
 too tired to gather anything whole,
 breathing it in like smoke
 there is no map out of this frozen scene,
 upside down, a long drop, 
 my hair streaming down and no handhold.

only these broken stars,
 then the cold silence—
 wide, cruel,
 where trust used to live
 you learn to live inside it,
 at first,
 learn how to breathe
 with broken lungs.

Some days I can't move.
 Some days I don't want to.
 Most days,
 I let the barrage of stories wash over me,
 until I almost forget our own.

But ours is not to question why,
 the Plan of the Almighty
 forgiveness doesn’t bloom,
 does not arrive with trumpets.

It flickers—
 small as a match in a rainstorm,
 small, but stubborn,
 it has to be, for hope to follow,
 not in grand gestures,
 but in the quiet choices,

a softer voice
 letting the light in...

Reference:

Walker, P. (2021). Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (2nd ed.).