7 Years

“Today my professor told me every cell in our entire body is destroyed and replaced every seven years.

How comforting it is to know one day I will have a body you will never have touched.” - l.m.

But what am I supposed to do during those 7 years?

Each and every morning when I wake
To see the finger prints you left behind
All over my throat, 
On my lips,
Across my wrists and down my stomach
Like grubby marks on a pint glass...

Although you held me less carelessly
Than you would that glass,
As though you did not know
I too was fragile,
As though you did not know 
I too could break...

And shatter
Into a million pieces,
Tiny pieces,
Insignificant pieces,
Forgettable pieces,
Just lost and lonesome shards...

Or maybe that was what you wanted!

If you could just break me down
Into small enough pieces 
No other man would be able to build me back up,
There would be no space for new love 
In my crevasses 
No...

Instead I’d lay there, 
Bare, 
Everything I once held proudly spilled
Like spoilt milk 
All over the floor for all to see,
Before you simply brushed me under the carpet...

As if nothing had happened,
Without a shadow of guilt or remorse,
I was just a play thing to you -
A possession for you to ruin as you pleased,
You didn’t care to decorate me 
As long as you could stamp your name so everyone knew who I belonged to... 

What am I supposed to do during in those 7 years? 

When I have to look your daughter in the eyes
And read her beautiful tales of Princes,
When I know that in real life
The Prince is very often the villain 
Who takes the strong, beautiful Princess
And leaves her a Damsel in distress...

When I have to see your eyes staring back at me
When I hold your son,
And try my best to hold it together
Whilst my heart breaks 
And my brain fills fit to burst
With prayers that I can raise him to be a better man....

When the house goes quiet 
And I’m left alone
Trying desperately to fix the broken parts of me,
Cutting myself on the shards of my past self,
And watching everything bleed out of me
But the parts of you that I just can’t seem to erase...

And what am I supposed to do when those 7 years are finally up?

When I wake up in the morning 
With my untouched skin,
To find the shards have all but disappeared
Yet my wounds remain,
No more marks or finger prints,
Just the dull ache of what once was...

When,
For the last 7 years, 
I have been so focussed on breaking out 
Of your shackles 
That my final freedom
Feels like imprisonment...

But then my bedroom door swings open
And before I know it my body is covered
In tiny fingerprints,
This time I am a blank canvas,
Which my children paint so beautifully,
With marks that I will cherish for the next 7 years...

And every 7 after that too.