The deepest night has long since
Settled around me
Like a plush velvet cocoon
As crickets and other denizens
Sing their hopeful
Mating songs
Which seem, strangely,
To enhance the silence
Rather than fill it.
As my hands,
Still gripping
The old worn diary,
Fall heavily to my lap,
Visions of the girl
I once was
Play through my memory
With the odd sensation
Of speaking both in the first
And third
Voices;
I am She
And She is Me,
The first person storyteller
And the third person Narrator,
The helpless victim
And her empowered advocate,
A female Janus
In one multi-faceted
Single-hued Spirit.
How far I have come!
I have outlived my abuser
And out witted my accusers
By embracing this life
I was given.
I have not died
By my own hand
Nor have I surrendered
My uniqueness or my integrity,
And though I cannot
Rid my memory
Of him, or of them,
I can,
And I am, nonetheless,
Thriving without them.