The Irony of Healing

They say repair will bring release,

But first it shatters borrowed peace,

Just as the air begins to clear,

The deeper ache is drawing near.

You see the joys that slipped your grip,

The years reduced to fingertip,

You mourn the ways you shrank to fit,

How silence taught you to commit

The child you were still sleeps inside,

Wrapped in the hush of love denied,

Now doors you bolted long ago,

Unhinge and show the dark below.

It isn’t weakness, or regret,

But thresholds that you'd still not met,

You cry not out of something new,

But for the truth that made it through.

Not every wound was sharp or loud,

Some breathe beneath the silent shroud,

And tears arrive when reason fades,

To trace the cost that silence paid.

This is the cost of getting clear:

To sit inside what brought you here,

A quiet cracking of the shell,

Where former versions used to dwell.

Cathrine Hottran 2025