If I Could Travel Back In Time. {poetry}
{source}
If I could go back
and talk to
sweet, innocent,
damaged
18-year-old girl-woman me,
what would I say?
I would look past the carefully practiced smile
the one she’s learned to flash so brightly
that she thinks you can’t see past to the pain
she thinks you can’t see the agony
she thinks you can’t see the damage
she thinks you can’t see the aloneness
the hollow echoing brokenness
I would look right into her eyes
eyes so full of sadness and shame
defeat and doubt
and I would tell her
I see her
I see her
I See Her
the her behind the contrived smile
the her she tries so hard to hide
the one who cries herself to sleep
the one who feels stuck between worlds
the one who feels like she has bricks
tied around her ankles
pulling her down
into the bottomless wasteland
sucking the breath and life right out of her
the one who hates herself
so much
that she doesn’t eat
that she drinks too much
that she cuts herself
that she thinks she deserves
the abuse
from herself
that she’s sure she deserves
the abuse
from him
I would pull her into the safety
of my now 42-year-old arms
I would wrap her up so tight
I would pour my love for her
into all of her cracks and crevices
into all the bloody mess
into the deepest darkest places
it can reach
onto every inch of her silken skin
and comb it through her matted hair
I would wipe away her tears
I would kiss her freckled cheeks
her fingertips
the scars on her arms
her eyes and the tip of her nose
her lips
the hollow of her neck
the bruises
I would fill her up with love
and with acceptance
so that there was no room for anything else
I would lie down beside her
with my arms wrapped around her
I would hold her all night
I would hold her all day
I would hold her for a lifetime
for as long as it took
I would fill her up with good
and drown out all the bad, all the monsters
all the demons, all the ghosts
that hide and lurk and torture her
night after night
day after day
endlessly
I would erase all the self-hate talk
from her vocabulary
and replace the damaging words
with Hope, with Trust, with Love, with Goddess,
with Strength, with Woman, with Warrior, with Good,
with Beauty, with Magic, with Soul, with Kindness,
with Gratitude, with Direction, with Future, with Purpose
with Passion, with Promise, with Grace, with Healing
with Courage, with Acceptance, with Belonging, with Enough
I would say the words, sing the words, yell the words,
bleed the words, write the words, whisper the words,
trace the words
over and over and over again
I would fill her up
with the feeling of them, with the knowing of them,
with the wanting of them, with the longing for them,
with the pleasure of them
until that
was all she knew.
***
Melissa Dodson is a California girl who found her home in the trees of Portland, OR. She’s a wife and mom, a writer and a Death Midwife. She writes about being a motherless daughter, grief, depression, vulnerability, and the beauty of a messy life. She is a dream-catcher, a grief-warrior, a survivor, a book-whore. Her work has been featured on Rebelle Society, The Tattooed Buddha, The Manifest-Station, behind-the-ink, and Some Talk of You & Me, among other online publications. She is the founder and curator of the Grief Rites Readers Series in Portland, OR. You could listen to her as the featured guest on the podcast On The Block Radio with Andrew Gurevich, and follow her blog, or find her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
***
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