Here is the foundation
Getting what you want
And what you don’t want
Together
She wanted to be marked
Signed
Changed
She wanted him to alter her
Make her a different girl
The same girl, but embroidered you might say
With a needle
We gathered around her
Watched her lay down on the forest green massage table
Pull her shirt up above her ribs
And lay still
And he began to stab her
Work with his needle
His craft
She stopped talking
The worries, the anxiety, the laughter
It just stopped
I almost expected a rollercoaster reaction
Shaking until you reach the top
Clutching the handle bar
White knuckles
And then falling
Deep
Down
Rushing
Fast
But screaming
Very loudly, screaming
But she wasn’t
She fell quietly
Silently
Her eyes transfixed on the gray wood walls
As if nothing mattered more.
We spoke to her
She heard
She listened
But not really
She didn’t make anything of it
I think she was shocked
That the pain was going to bring beauty
That this lack of control
And vulnerability
Could make her a new person
I felt it too
As I held her hand
We connected
We were both shocked
We realized
The control we thought we had was gone
The memories of it slipped into fog
We had only harnessed chaos
Disorder
And called it control
It was a lie
And the lies we thought we knew were lies
Weren’t really the truth to us, even when we thought we knew it
On that massage table
She fell back
Into the memories
And I waded at the shores
As she fell into the waters
This time, not drowning herself
But rather baptizing
She knew she could start again
She had the control
And when she stood up
She laughed
Genuinely