Healing
Nayo Jones
I had a therapist tell me once, it was ironic how much love I gave out, 'cause I didn't give much to myself.
She laughed, like self-love was a sick joke.
I chuckled, then cried at home.
I had someone tell me once, I could not love anyone else until I learn to love myself.
This time, I got to laugh.
This time, the sick joke was mine, was me.
Might as well wait forever.
I remember hating myself at the age of seven, journals filled to the brim with criticisms.
By eight, I had enough pages to stitch them into wings to fly close enough to the sun, to see my tears turn to steam, felt the wax burn on my shoulders and mold into thick skin.
I was nine when I wanted to die.
Thirteen when I found a solution, figured if I could cut my legs enough gravity would let me go.
When it didn't, I tied a pillowcase around my neck, twisting like the rope swings I knew so well from childhood, heard my heartbeat pound in my ears like a warning drum, then fade.
I'd almost convinced myself I'd done it.
When I started writing, I smeared my blood on every page to remind myself that everything beautiful has a consequence.
I'd hoped to stall the clotting long enough to give myself to the craft and let myself go.
I have died so many times.
So when I told you that loving you almost makes life worth it, I was not joking.
When I tell you that loving you almost makes me forget how much I hate myself, it is not poetry.
Loving you is taking all of the love I could never give myself and putting it to good use.
It is reminding myself that if someone can love a dying thing this way, can hold the Lazarus of my body and give thanks for the way it holds back.
If someone can kiss the scars, administer the pills, absorb the bad days and wake up smiling next to me, then I can try to breathe again.
Because self-love does not always come first.
Or second.
Or even ever.
But your love be the guardrail on the ledge, be the drawers that hide all the sharp things,
Be the body that carries my collapsed frame into bed, be the flowers you bought,
Because even though they are dying too, they still dance.
Love will not heal me, will not wipe my slate of a body clean - I will always be a woman of wounds, of rope-mark neck and melted skin.
Love will not heal me, but it will hold my hand if I ever heal myself, and maybe teach me a joke that I can stay alive long enough to laugh at.
I love you, enough to want to love myself too.
Write the lyrics for a misc song made in 2018, titled "Healing", by artist "Nayo Jones".