All Things I Know To Be...

I stare into a mirror.

All things I know to be broken

Staring back at me.

But somehow,

Despite the darkness I feel,

I see illumination,

Pulsing through the cracks of my broken self.

As if trying to speak to me,

Through the pulses of light,

The mirror begins to fade

And I am suddenly surrounded

By all that I know to be me.

The broken.

The brave.

The magic.

The everything.

A flood of light blinds yet embraces me.

I hear the mirror shatter into a million pieces.

Shards of glass cutting me.

Seemingly falling right through me.

I do not bleed though.

I shine.

The light pulsing brightest

From the areas that have been cut the deepest.

How can this be I ask my many selves?

These cuts are darkness to me.

Pain.

Heartache.

Loss.

And failure.

As if in a choir,

My voices,

Join in song.

Harmonizing a message,

At first I don’t quite understand.

I let the voices fade.

For how long I cannot tell.

Minutes?

Hours?

Days?

Perhaps years.

But I open my eyes and see nothing.

Darkness.

I am numb with fear.

And then a pulse of light blinds me.

I adjust my eyes to locate its source.

To my surprise,

It is me.

The light shines again in me,

In my own world of darkness.

The choir returns softly.

The message raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

Darkness is not evil

Nor does it mean to be your enemy.

For what good is light

Without darkness to show you its worth?

The warmth of my tears

Carve out more paths of light.

All things I knew to be cracks,

Flaws,

Ugly reminders of the pain I have endured in life

Were now becoming things I know to be art,

Masterpieces,

Beacons of light to inspire.

Motivate and illuminate.

I close my eyes as more tears fall.

A whirlwind of light,

Dark,

Silence

And sound,

Push me through a wall of glass.

I stare into a mirror.

All things I know to be broken

No longer look back at me.

In its place,

An illumination of who I was,

Who I am,

And who I could be

Glow fiercely from the reflection.

I reach out to touch the glass.

The cracks along my arm and hand,

No longer cracks.

Instead strokes of glowing gold paint sparkling.

It is there,

Where I am stronger.

These strokes of paint,

Markings of a masterpiece in progress.

I know somehow

All things I have known to hurt me

Will eventually be the things to teach and to strengthen me.

I will hurt.

I will cry.

But I will glow.

And I will fly.

For all things I have known to be wrong

Help me fly to what is right.

And the lesson learned continuously is

Through my darkness I have found my light.