Naked

I guess it was something cryptic, loving a man who could hurt you so bad.  I stepped outside onto the warm grass, the blood still running down my face.  This hit had to be the last.  I could hide a broken spirt or a shattered soul but I couldn't hide anything that required stitches.  I took the hem of my flowy skirt and wiped my face.  The sun was beaming and I could hear him thinking about a new apology.  But I was done with those.  I had no more room for his apologies.  I had no more room to forgive and forget.  My soul was packed with bruises.  My spirit was overflowing with his deceit.  There were boxes of bullsh.t I needed to stop tripping over.


I needed a break, rather a breakthrough.  Something to make my spirit move into the simple abyss of having sense.  Wasn't I too beautiful to endure such ugly things?  Wasn't I too smart to be with a man so dumb?  Wasn't I anything more than a curvaceous punching bag?  Wasn't I more than that?  And I wondered where were the rainbows after our storms.  I had bruises like they were freckles and nightmares like they were feature films in my head.  Tired of staining clothes with my own blood or staining my life with his memory.  What would be my final straw?  

I tried.
Wore my strength like it was too small for my growing hips. I let someone shred into me like tornadoes through corn fields.  When did my relationship become my cross to bear?  When did love become war? 

I wanted to know when being a woman became being a doormat and why couldn't I understand how much of my fault it was.  I prayed on it, asked God to teach me to love myself enough to walk away.  And when I got off my knees, there he was standing over me with another apology in his hands.  I began to unravel myself.  Slipped off my skirt, pulled my shirt over my head, unsnapped my bra and slid out of my panties.

"You can have everything except me."
And I walked away, naked like the day I was born because I was finally taking back what God had given me in the first place.