On Healing

She will rip up floorboards and bear rust-eaten nails to sunlight,

Shatter the potted plants that suffocate under the burden of their own roots.

She collects the dust beneath her fingernails, in the crevices of my mattress,

Bides her time to sculpt the image of herself that she sees in the mirror.

She drinks in the discord of mismatched parts, reveling in the role 

Of some sort of savior, offering light in the darkest of nights in the form of

A torch, igniting the village into flames. Demands payment for the gift of warmth.

She is blind to the grief that penetrates the fog of our own aspirations.

Like a ghost, she drifts – 

Seeking the missing “missing reasons” of fraudulent victimhood.

She weeps at the idea of accountability in favor of infantilization.

My hands shake.

My voice is not always strong. 

It takes twenty pages to cohesively articulate the echo chamber that sits

Between my ears, whispering, into the cradle of insomnia. 

I was a gaping wound with sutures of those who have

Loved me, who I have loved, and who I have lost. 

She has no right to my scar tissue.

I survive, anyway.

Submitted as part of the 2025 Humanities and Healing Event.

By Michelle Chin