Elizabeth Anne Schwartz
On healing
How do you hold the pieces
of yourself together
as trauma splits you
like a cavern
down the center?
How do you get out
once you’ve fallen in,
eyes wide and wild,
Alice down the rabbit hole?
How can you crawl through
this place that echoes like a tomb?
Wade through it like tar,
thick as woodsmoke in your hair?
Do you bolt it shut,
or exorcise it?
Stand frozen in place
like a doe
before the crash?
How can you spread your arms
wide enough to embrace it;
where do you find the strength
to whisper, truce?
Which healing words are plaster,
and which are a painting
hung over the hole
his fist made in the wall?
Elizabeth Anne Schwartz (she/her) writes sapphic fiction and poetry, and loves all things dark, lyrical, and confessional. She earned her BA in Creative Writing at Purchase College. Her chapbook, Nine Stages of Coming Out, was recently released by tiny wren lit. Visit her website at elizabethanneschwartz.carrd.co/
