Poetry Hour: Entry 16 - Split Ends

I have manufactured many a poem over the last year, most all written and edited and comprised on the Notes app I have on my phone. (I know. How lame. How millennial can you get.) I am hoping to edit through these poems a little more and make a second portfolio (after the first, She Sips in Silence) called Girl in Slow Motion. From this compilation, I have already shared some poems on this blog: "My Darkness", "Buried Alive", and "heaven over water" to name a few of the recent ones. Now I share another one; one that I just wrote the other night.

This poem deals with letting go. Letting go of things that are necessary to let go of, as hard and painful as that is. Letting go forces growth. It is the rose that is nipped away. It is pruning. You can see the beauty that once was, being satisfied and thankful in that, but recognize that to cut away is the best thing to do, ultimately.

I haven't done a lot of this sort of thing in my life, I realized. I see now that that was, and has been, a big factor for my anxiety. I try to keep alive things that are already dead, or near to inevitable death. I try to grasp and control so things are kept neat and tidy in life, in relationships; so that things don't fall apart; so that there is peace; so that there is happiness. But that is not life often times, and I cannot hold all the world in my two hands. I know more now than ever how it is so important and healthy to let go... when the time is right. And it's a delicate balance. To know "when" involves a lot of wisdom and discernment. I think (and what this poem deals with is) that I am learning just that: cues of when to hold on and when it is time to release. It's a thin balance. I hope to continue working on it as the year rolls on.

Split Ends

The whisper of scissors cutting my hair.
A quicker inward gasp, swallowing the air.
Pieces of me left in fragments on the floor.
They are the dead, the past, and what for?
I am healthy now, new and light.
Yet it seems, somehow, not right
leaving trickles of me behind;
letting the sun-drenched be declined
and without the roots that once held life;
eradicated with a sudden, screaming knife.
It’s a shock that takes you by surprise.
It’s the surface for the newly baptized.
It’s a letting go of what needs to leave
and finding that there’s space to breathe
in a world once wrought with a me
that is no longer. This is nearer to free.
This is stronger. This is the new pain
that molds the layer I was meant to attain.
This is the baggage left there, unneeded;
That is seen and, rightfully, well heeded
as I walk away from those silver silken sheers
that I once hated. That made everything clear.
That I appreciated as they did me a favor
and allowed me to not hold on and savor
what was threatening the good to come.
The new beginning. The sinking and rising sun
and the knowledge that I am okay.
The hair is left there to be swept away
so the ground can meet her next decay.