Dawn Photo Co

⁣ I have seen dark & it knows my name.⁣
I have known it’s suffocation & saturation.
I became a byproduct of divorce at 11.⁣
I have had my heart ripped out and stomped on with steel toed boots.⁣
I’ve been told to get in the dark and stay there, where I belong. Been drug by hair and locked in a lightless bedroom.⁣
I’ve seen the inside of the juvenile detention center. Twice. ⁣
Felt betrayal s***f out the small flame I thought was mine to keep
inside my small frame.⁣
I’ve lie half dead in a hospital, abandoned by the ones who put me there.⁣
Slipping in and out of existence.⁣
Spent months hearing the beeping of a heart monitor who’s rythym convinced me I was dying, only to find out it’s worse-⁣
Just my bodies response to the trauma and theres no way out like death would have provided.⁣
Watched a best friend die in a car I should have been in.
My innocence was stolen- ⁣no, ripped from me at 14.⁣
The trauma buried deep within my brains makeup.⁣
I accepted the chains I thought I deserved for 3 years of my youth. ⁣
I sought love and identity under sheets of promiscuity. ⁣
At 16 a poppy seed was sewn in the garden of my womb, and at the time, it felt like a prison sentence.⁣
But, she would give birth to freedom. ⁣
She would grow a story of messy redemption. ⁣
The road of giving up everything ⁣
To gain everything, in the form of coming home from school to bottle feed a helpless flower named Emagen.⁣
I army crawled my way out of the inadequacy that was tattooed on my forehead.⁣
I learned to stand, limp, walk, and then run, toward a new future. ⁣
I fell so many times again. ⁣
Accumulating scars of guilt & shame.⁣
I found broken love⁣
I brokenly learned to ⁣
brokenly love and ⁣
be brokenly loved. ⁣
We painted on the canvas handed to us. ⁣
Hell bound determined not to use the same colors as our eyes were accustomed to.⁣
I sat in the cool of the evening with bloodied blistered hands, trying to learn the art of gardening that was never passed down to me. ⁣
I planted seeds. ⁣
A morning glory named Natalie.⁣
A marigold named Beckham. ⁣
Two, who’s buds never broke through the surface.⁣
And then Valor, a marigold.⁣
Who was ripped from the soil of my heart.⁣
And so, I am staring blank face in to the ⁣
Vacuum seal void I’ve seen so many times before.⁣
Because⁣
I’ve seen dark. ⁣
And it knows my name.⁣
Some dark I’m not ready to name. ⁣
Your mind is a scary place to be when all you see is dark.⁣
Wishing that your life was just a jacket made of flesh you could take off and hang up on the hook⁣
In your foyer where you used to hang a diaper bag.⁣
Wishing you could shed the very essence of you.⁣
Wishing that the Light…⁣
He would just take you too.⁣
Pluck you from the garden.⁣
Harvest you in His warmth ⁣
and end all this dark.