She tells me it takes time,
but what is time?
The passing of moments
that turn into hours
that make up the days
that stretch into weeks
that fill up the months
that linger as years?

It takes time to heal.
I cut my arm once.
It was on purpose.
Deep enough to need stitches
but I didn’t see a doctor.
Instead I watched time pass.
Time was red blood flowing
Into slowly clotting drying blood
Into stiff inflexible scab
Into peeling, pusing dead skin
Into pink jagged itchy new skin
Into scar, also known as memory.

It takes time to forgive.
My fingers run over that scar
and time stands still
as it rushes through my brain:
Time is in my mind’s eye
Four-year old me slipping on glasses
for the first time,
Seven-year old me slipping on glasses
after they were slapped off and shattered, again,
Twelve-year old me slipping on glasses
after they were slapped off and shattered, again,
Sixteen-year old me slipping on glasses
after they were slapped off and shattered, again,
Twenty-one-year old me slipping on glasses
after they were shattered for the last time;
I blink at the clock
and see a life-time has passed in thirty seconds.

It takes time.
And some days it feels like
it was all such a very long time ago.
And some days my heart seizes
like it did at the moment it happened.
It takes time; but what is time?

I, too, was once a man
in search of guiding light.
Hopeless, lost, alone
and ready to give up the fight.

When a helping hand reached out,
unencumbered by my weight
and took it upon themselves
to pull me from Hell's gate.

Self sacrifice; a virtue
that I would someday know
to be the shelter that I found
beneath the cape of my hero.

Confide in me, my darling;
I'll be your great escape.
It was written in the starlight
that I would don the cape.

Why is it?
Why is it that we are willing to hurt ourselves so badly,
to allow our hearts to be broken time and time again?
To shatter who we are.
To spend our nights in nothing but silence
and the sniffles that break through the air.
What are we doing?
What gives them the right?
You run after the person senselessly,
blinded by the brutal truth.
Blinded by the fact that you are running not only
back towards them,
but running away from the truth.
The truth that they no longer want you.
And so you run.
You run, and you run
so hard and so far that your bones begin to melt into
the path that you so desperately try to stay on.
You’re killing yourself
with the need of a single person.
Find a way to let them go.
It will hurt.
It will feel as though your heart is being torn from your chest
and simply discarded.
Like a piece of trash.
But let them go.
Let them run and run,
because they will end up turning the tables.
They will realize who they have lost.
They will begin to run after you,
continuing the never ending chase.
But they’ll be too tired
because they were chasing the wrong person all along.

I am origami
touch my heart
and I will unfold
for you
Peel back
all the layers
and you will see
my soul
how deep an ocean
I am
how far Ive swam
to lose myself
to find myself
to breathe again