From my Oct 2013 journal

Curled into her arms I laugh with joy
and the sound of it delights me, like a bell, like bird song
clear and pure and unrehearsed,
without audience or self consciousness,
she holds me and my skin
trembles in the candlelight, there’s a space
here within our arms, when we are breast to breast, where
darkness does not fall, for a night
or an afternoon
or a golden morning, I am without a past
no touch but hers, no memories of pain or blood or loss
we are shameless.

We are kites,
flying over all those burdens,
beyond the dark obsession,
the memory intruding,
the nightmares from which we wake
screaming, the cult of survivors,
the platitudes of therapists, the way
the social workers think they are being enlightened when they tell
us in the mandatory child safe courses that children who are abused
will never recover, the screams that
sound in our deeps,
that wait beneath our words, that we can hear
when we place ear to breast:
None of it is real.

 None of it is a truth we have to live forever,
some days the knots slip
and the strings fly free, we dance
on the other side of darkness, we are
reborn, into innocence, love
begets freedom, phoenix from ashes
there is laughter in our bed
joy in our love.