An Early Goodbye

Silence echoes loudest
When defined by heart and not sound.
A wound still bleeding,
A goodbye too painful to name.
A fact not easily understood.
I said goodbye yesterday
To someone I was supposed to know,
But the reality was I never did.
I knew the image projected,
Who she wanted to be,
But never who she was...
The truth came in a capsule that was hard to swallow.
She was a victim of rape.
I didn't know how to
Talk to her about that.
What to say, what not to say,
How to help.
All I saw was blood
On my hands.
Where was I when she needed me?
The blood spread.
Why didn't I reach out and help her now?
The problem was that her truth was inconvenient.
I wasn't ready to feel it
So I turned away as silence echoed loudly,
And I shrugged the truth off my mind
So I could quietly live my life without
Dealing with her.
I felt the absence of everything she was
Even as I was so focused on
Denying her existence,
Pretending she had not been through experiences,
Faced emotions,
That I couldn't accept,
That caused me to lose myself
In the overwhelming truth of what really was.
Her words, vulnerable but strong,
Pierced my protective shell.
I was raped.
My shell cracked because
That
Is Not
What she said.
In words so soft I wouldn't have known if I wasn't
Right there to listen,
She said
We were raped.
We...
And the world
Stopped
Making sense.
I couldn't erase the words,
Couldn't pretend any longer they didn't matter to me,
Couldn't get the truth out of my heart.
I had said goodbye to myself for nothing
Because
Here
Now
The wound kept bleeding,
And I didn't understand this kind of truth.
The echoes grew as the silence spread.
I struggled to be vulnerable with myself,
Talk to myself,
More importantly, listen,
And slowly the silence shifted.
Goodbyes can be stopped,
Even in the middle of the night when
Everything is black.
A small ball of yellow appeared.
A feeling -
Compassion.
It was the only gift I knew how to give myself,
The only fact I found comfort in...
She should never have been hurt.
And the silence hiccuped as
I listened to what made me uncomfortable,
As I found hope in what I heard,
Hope for my future,
Hope for my past.
Because the person who had started talking about
This inconvenient truth,
The person who had
Cratered my world
By making me feel hers,
Was only 5 years old...
Bleeding, crying, scared,
But undeniably me.
Silence echoes loudest
When defined by heart and not by sound.
I spent my life
Shut down
From what happened to me
And lived among the echoes.
Now, I am facing the truth,
Acknowledging the me I never let myself feel
And trying to heal.
In the void left by echoes,
My heart is finally speaking out.