those who slap
creep
crawl
bleed
scream
these words onto clean white pages or onto small scraps of old lined paper, ripped from a traveler’s journal
see the old words scribbled threaded with the madness of a shipwrecked, damaged soul
and, often, they too find themselves treading in similar deep, empty waters as their words lay in books of fine linen or in
tattered notebooks stuffed with
thoughts or pure, raw emotion…
they see themselves on public screens such as this
understand or knowingly feel the familiar signs
trusting the aged buoys in the distance they find their own markers signifying
a journey of crawling back onto safer sands…..
others
watch the process of
finding an elusive wisdom, recognizing the spirit, semi-revived knowing the effort it takes to finally
re-locate the breath held for a time that was so gruffly pushed out of lungs….
they know what it is to nurse scuffed knees, now tended and bandaged after such a fall from grace or favor
the spirit/heart mostly recovers from the aches and bruises that once felt endless and irreparable
it sees where the breaking points were where tender flesh was ripped from bone, tendon & muscle
how each hunk of us once blown apart and fragmented into a million broken pieces
was nudged back into living
after all…
like skid-marks on a lost road black and midnight blue on asphalt
fellow word travelers on these empty, unforgiving roads watch
another one crawling from the wreckage emerging
burned
scarred and battered
but
somehow
alive again
after all