To Remove a Bloodline (Fear of Breakdown)
by Kayla Vargas
How trauma makes the future warp with the past, meddled with the present, gets everything jumbled up.
Maybe healing is holding the possibility, perhaps, that your weary world ended a long time ago—not over and over and over again.
You remain here.
Resurrected rather than rejected.
Risen as holy redemption.
There is nothing you haven’t already endured, survived, incurred, devised
Nothing left to shatter your life
Into a million minute pieces
All that is left is to re-learn what peace is.
Phoenix from ashes, when presentpast clashes--
Where you started isn’t where you are going;
It is where you have been.
You are not sin.
Evil has a face and it looks nothing like you.
Maybe healing is holding the possibility, perhaps, that your weary world ended a long time ago—not over and over and over again.
You remain here.
Resurrected rather than rejected.
Risen as holy redemption.
There is nothing you haven’t already endured, survived, incurred, devised
Nothing left to shatter your life
Into a million minute pieces
All that is left is to re-learn what peace is.
Phoenix from ashes, when presentpast clashes--
Where you started isn’t where you are going;
It is where you have been.
You are not sin.
Evil has a face and it looks nothing like you.
Kayla Vargas, Ph.D. is a psychologist by day and a poet by moonlight. They are a non-binary activist, poet, and scholar residing in Yakama land.