Holding On To Glass – A Poem

“I don’t understand how you can do it.”

She said.

Her voice was soft

and her eyes

were narrowed in thought.

“How can you forgive? Does nothing from the past matter?”

I thought of her question

and how loaded it was.

My past was a mine field

that waited for me.

I would step softly along a chosen path,

always careful not

to walk in certain spots.

Those spots held the memories

that were best left alone.

Occasionally however,

I would stumble and fall

upon the grass within my mind

that held things,

memories that I could not let go of,

thoughts that would dig deep

and grow roots underneath,

hiding within my mind garden.

When I would fall upon

one of the mind mines,

it would not explode

in the traditional sense.

Instead, it would bloom

as if it were a flower.

I would lay on the grass,

watching the memory replay

and relive itself within me.

As I looked at the memory,

I could smell everything from that moment

and my ears would fill with every sound

from every second that played within me.

For a moment,

the memory would leave me shaken

and I would remember the

hurt, terror, horror, pain

of that moment.

Then it would fall away into the ground,

as if it were a seed

waiting to grow within me.

I look at the earth that

the memory came from.

Instead of falling into that earth,

letting the darkness that it holds

take me over completely,

I choose to do something different.

I reach inside my pocket

and pull out a seed.

I place it within the hole

that held the memory

within my mind garden.

I pat the earth tight

and water the earth.

I know that now that the memory is free,

that it rides upon the wind now,

heading towards the great unknown

and that it can no longer hurt me.

It is only the memories that I hold on to

that take the most blood,

as if those memories were glass shards.

I stand within myself

and look at my mind garden.

There are thousands of flowers

that surround me and even more

blank space of grass that hold more memories,

just waiting to be discovered again.

I look at her and shrug.

“I forgive because I choose to do so.”

I say.

“Otherwise, I’d be holding onto a lot of glass shards.”

She looks as if she understands.

I look down at my hands

and see the criss cross of old scars

that mark the palms of my hands.

Each one represents a memory

that I held onto until I bled.

Even so,

each scar also represents a flower that I planted

within the garden of my mind,

turning a difficult memory

into a moment of release.

I wander in my mind garden,

and listen to the sound of glass shards

as they float within the wind.

It sounds like music and I wonder

how many more memories

there are to

find.