Destructive Love

By: Laura Dowd

The most monumental shifts in our lives can surprisingly creep up incrementally and unnoticed  

As time seems to do unless we grab onto dates and anniversaries from the violent and invisible

river unstoppable and infinitely wide, turning in on itself

Until our days come around again  

And in a wave  

his words and hands sweep through your front door

Shake you out of your mind

The settled chaos reveals both newly broken and reinforced walls.

Which reconfigured like bones under stress.

Neighborhoods of sand are of course malleable, you sigh.

You just wanted to be blind to change, your own resilience and his worth

Suddenly evicted and freefalling into the unexplored.

No longer captive by the arms of ghosts and old barriers that stopped being long ago

In a space where you were so vulnerable.

As it’s easy to confuse stillness with what’s supposed to be our final resting place

Often blind as silly structures and broken boards wash away with the currents.  

Until that overwhelming fear causes you to run back home, what was left in the innermost basements of your mind.  

Inside you found a neglected self cowering in rooms that didn’t exist anymore.

Staying behind lines where she was once safe from old enemies disguised as lovers.

Haunted thoughts with a broken house

Battered by storms with future clouds on the horizon.

You promised to make her see that she could stand and face it.

And started to pick up the pieces grain by grain to make something never seen before

Arising from darkness, steps you carved from will

And suddenly being in his arms felt different when you returned to them.

You saw past the projections and into the walls of another home that he was trying

To knock down to make room for you.

Demolition previously unseen.

Another pattern of an addict? Or a new fork in the road?

You move on, unsure.

Featured in Basement Babes, Issue 15