It’s a story I could not tell before,

my tongue tied by a delicate bow of velvet grief

So smooth against my heart for the last decade

that I hardly noticed the crack in it

as much, the bow covering my entire heart,

crack and all. That I almost forgot.

Reminded only and often by the frayed ends of pain

That flayed the back of my throat where

the story stayed, bridled and hidden,

drowned there by public common sense and expectations

hurled at it from familial corners and friend hubs,

coated permanently, seemingly, into place by tears cried

within darkened shower stalls and beneath the sound of music

that, in the first years, blared and bellowed to cover up the crack

and to detract onlookers from the peeking tongues of the story

that itched to come out and play.

With time, the legs previously buoyed up only by

chanted reggae psalms and held firmly in place by

rasta melodies tethered to those expectations holding

the story and the heart-crack down and hidden,

refused to stand still and let the story die,

they longed to run. Go. Tell.

Incredibly, it stayed alive through time,

the story did, the tickle in the throat stretching out to peer into

the world, whispering that it was time to let it out.

The ears heard, the tears listened but the heart refused, afraid.

The story had stayed alive, muted only by the patient anticipation

that one day the legs would gallop, the tears would run bright red

and the crack in the heart would unfold that bow and

slowly, magnificently, unfurl the tongue and

the whip of public common sense would come to lose that sting,

and the cinder-block expectations that had kept that story down

over time, with time, in time, for time, because of time

would disintegrate slowly, more and more with each passing year

until the ten that had passed had chipped away at those,

whittling away and finally, clearly, exposing what needed to be told.

The story of loss, the saga of death and

the crack that needed to be healed once

the story grew wings and leapt into the roof of my mouth,

over my rasp-red tongue and out,

into the world where it should have been all along.