Your Words

If you have words
to bind your pain, 
bind it and put it 
to one side.  Step
around it, walk away,
don’t look back.

You will
come back to it, of course.
One day it will reappear
in your path. You will
have walked full circle
and come back to it — 
it never moved, cannot
transport itself — but the words
that held it will prove
to have bound you too.

Here you are,
never having looked back
but with it in full view
before you.  The view
isn’t that familiar at first — 
you thought
you’d managed to forget?

Then you find 
your antiquated prayers — 
your knees crack 
as you strike the earth
with all your weight — that or upon
dropping to a bathroom floor, perhaps;

maybe you wake in bed,
with your knees
curled to your chest.

You may have no words,
now. You may be 
unable to speak
of any of this
to anyone but yourself
with something on your tongue
that is not open to language — 

well, you may have these words
if they work. They are as much yours
as they are anyone’s.