Sanctuary

This is a poem I wrote about the ex-drunk boyfriend after he left.    I wrote a poem on the bathroom wall, something I had never done in high school. It was our own wall. Where only a few friends would see it. It was where he hid from me, the only room in the house with a lock. I made it a point to spoil it for him, like he had spoiled Christmas and my birthday and Valentine’s Day. It was the only retribution I had. It was childish and weak, my inability to speak the words that flow freely from my hands. So I spoiled it for him. The only other sanctuary he had from me and our pathetic life was his room, the one he had taken from me. He would sit and stare at the antlers on the wall, his accomplishments. After a while, neither of us lived in this world. He receded to the woods of his mind, deep and cold with pines that pricked your steps with sharp, stabbing needles and prevented the maples and oaks and dogwoods from growing or blooming. I tried not to live there with him and I always wore shoes in that room, lest I spend hours picking needles out of my feet. I lived in a perpetual state of suspended hope, ignoring confusion and anger and the spitefulness that rose in me daily. I tried to walk a foot off the ground, but that place is only for ghosts. I assimilated and compromised. Missing, that the part of me that does not like to do such things was angry at me. And as one side of me grew angrier with the other, they fought each other more than I fought with him. The harder I tried the more he slipped through my fingers, like water finding cracks in the stones on the mountain, expanding them with each icy step, until they crumble and can no longer hold the burden on their own. My empire fell. He left gaping wounds where the fish tank stood and the chair used to be. The walls were pock-marked from his disease and escapism. I patched the walls and filled the empty spaces, but he lingers. He took things from me that did not belong to him, but little by little, I see their return. I feel a little of the old me, the one with hope and joy, but she will never fully return. Of that, I am certain. I do not mourn her passing as I used to. I only accept that I have been changed and to attempt to change back would only irritate that side of myself that does not like to assimilate or compromise. I have become harsh. Some people call it a wall, others, a sanctuary, where the pines grow tall and the forest lies deep and cold. I can walk without shoes here because the needles do not stab me, only those who attempt to enter. And to those I say, beware.              So, I wrote that about him, about me, about us.  That's it.  I'm no longer the person I was when I wrote that.  Here is another poem I wrote back when I saw the first Lord of the Rings and found that Viggo Mortensen was also a poet.  He inspired me greatly so I named a poem after his character that has nothing to do with his character.  One of my absolute fave parts of LOTR1 is when he's sitting in the inn, in the darkness, smoking his pipe and the fire illuminates his eyes...   Strider   Stride I do on thin ice spider web cracks I see bubbles beneath my feet Further away from shore I go I should fall through Ice is thinner in the middle Or is it? What if I don’t believe that? Away from the shore I go Stronger I become The bubbles rumble But don’t break Thin ice holds Even the heaviest of hearts