CHILD, IT'S OKAY TO BREAK

CHILD, IT’S OKAY TO BREAK

Child, it’s okay to break.

Go ask the trees.

They’ve been through a few ice storms themselves.

And, yes, sometimes the lightning

mistakes your unicorn for a lightning rod

and strikes it like a drone out of the blue

when no one’s home but you on a Friday night

because you’re ashamed to go out

for fear of people seeing what your boyfriend did

when he came down on you like the Leonids.

And I’ve seen how you’ve tried

to craft tiaras out of broken chandeliers,

how you’ve sat late into

the darkest hours of the night

alone at the kitchen table

trying to pick up the pieces

and try to put them back together again

like a jigsaw of your battered reflection

in a shattered mirror that cracked

more like a fortune-cookie than a koan.

And, yes, I understand how hard it is

the more he’s false to you

to have to be true for the both of you

to keep the dream alive

of something nurturing, something

the way you imagined it would be

for you and your son and his misunderstood father.

And it feels like a wasted sacrifice to the wrong god

when you realize for all the pain you’ve suffered

you’re just a pyramid

trying to do social work with quicksand

that keeps getting kicked in your face.

You’ve been pouring a mirage

into a bottomless cup of emptiness.

And you’re afraid of your own happiness

as if you were raising the shadow of its assassin

to follow it everywhere like a personal diary.

And isn’t it true you’ve learned

to shred your joys in secret

like an embassy that abandoned you

when you asked for sanctuary

like a candle in a storm

and they suggested there was nothing

that could be done for you or your son

or your misunderstood boyfriend

but blow the light out

if you want to see better in the dark

what you’re running from. Denial,

rejection, self-recrimination, self-disgust

at how much bad meat your wishing well

has had to swallow, and even worse,

how your love potion number nine

smells like wild orchids blooming

in the shadow of an outhouse, and tastes

like someone watered down the wine with mouthwash.

Hey, pussycat, you’re trying to build a bridge

across a river with only one bank.

And it’s brutal, yes, when you take

the blindfold off and realize

sometimes love’s a kidnapper

and all you’ve been doing all along alone here

is walking the plank to get to the other side of nowhere.

And even after he’s gone,

paying a ransom on your emotional afterlife.

Or you were keel-hauled on the moon

when the ice-berg struck

the Great Barrier Reef of an ice age on the move.

You’re the last lifeboat

that’s got any room for your son

and you’ve been grievously wounded

by trying to walk like Cinderella

on the thorns of glass

that are all that’s left of your crystal slipper

splintering across the sky,

the sign of a constellation

on the verge of a nervous breakdown

trying to distinguish the dreamcatchers

from the leg hold traps.

Child, it’s ok to break. Cry.

It’s not healthy to live too far away from tears.

And, hey, kitten, a little advice from the alley

you’re living three doors down the passage to hell.

It’s not wise to wear your heart on your sleeve

when you’re in a knife-fight with a serial killer

who keeps sticking it to you over and over again

just to prove he loves you

like the cheap thrill of the killing.

It’s one thing to be taken in lust

by a god in the guise of a beast,

but it’s another altogether

to upstage yourself in the name of love

and throw the fight out of habit

to keep the peace with impotence

shaking its fist at your sex because it fears

the magic in your medicine bag

is a lot stronger than the two little beans

he’s waiting to sprout beside the bed

as if the story of Jack and the Beanstalk

went to his head gigantically

like an ax with a castration complex.

Child, it’s ok to break. Laugh.

Come on, just once, if you can’t be happy,

try a little evil glee at least.

It doesn’t mean you’re spitting on a deathmask.

You don’t have to aim

like cobras and the Taliban

for a literate girl’s eyes.

But wouldn’t it feel good,

just for a second to wipe the smile

off a cruel clown’s face with industrial disinfectant?

Wouldn’t it be absurdly gratifying

to confront the mirrors

that have been bullying you

with a shepherd moon

on a collision course

plotted out by the flightplan in your hand

and watch them run from you for a change.

The way I see it through my spaced-out telescope

you’re boyfriend is a tiny mutant asteroid

all ore, no gold inside, that shines

by your reflected light, iron pyrite,

a mere nugget of a man you keep

trying to hang on to like an atmosphere.

Of course you’re going to get kicked around

in this asteroid belt of broken hearts

were everybody’s ready to throw the first stone

at any sign of life that could threaten

the lack of one of their own.

Just once, forgive yourself

for something you didn’t do.

Just once, let go, whether you

fall like Icarus toward the sun,

jump from that paradise you’ve

been trying to make on earth,

that’s been jumping all over you,

or just kick it like a bad drug

that’s been getting high on you

like a voodoo doll on coke.

You’ve been holding on to a lot of things

your son, your dreams, a few ideals,

the odd, outcast trinket

you befriended in your solitude

because you both shared the same fate,

a gerrymandered liferaft

of what was left of your enchanted island

after the tsunami hit you first like a spell to the heart

and then raised its fist against you

for the first time in your life.

Child, it’s ok to break. To weep.

To liberate that snakepit inside

that’s tied you up in knots.

You keep trying to enlighten your chains

as if you could change iron into gold,

and even though I know you think

you sometimes manage it,

and who knows, maybe you do,

but you’re still held as fast to the wall

to face the music, to proofread the warning,

as you ever were

when a hand reaches out for your throat.

You’re handcuffed to your own haloes.

Too much Madonna, not enough Mary Magdalene.

After the blossom, the bitter green apple.

The kiss. The smile. The wince. The grimace.

The unending last farewell whether it’s

the sound of a sad friendship

or an ego breaking up along stress fractures

like the great continent Pangaea

to diversify the species of its hatred.

And then who knows how or why or when

if you’re lucky, moonrise and ripening

as a less percussive music flows into your veins

like an autumn night listening to a nightbird

wondering why it sings in hiding

from all who can hear it, but one.

You haven’t underwhelmed your beauty.

Your vanity is proof enough of that.

Hey, Tabatha, you’re still a witchy cat.

You haven’t sold your innocence cheap.

You didn’t rat it out in your sleep.

If there’s nothing to go back to

maybe that’s because it’s waiting for you up ahead.

But you’re never going to know if you don’t go.

Child, it’s ok to break. It’s how we grow.

All these closed doors and gates of passage

we leave open behind us as if time

might double back somehow to find us again

seeking enlightenment in a cult of black sheep.

If there’s no return address

on the arrowhead in your wound

it’s not a loveletter. It’s not a keepsake.

And, yes, it hurts like hell, you’ve got to

bite down hard on the moon, swallow

the bitter antidote of your afterlife

to push it all the way through

the eye of the needle in an attempt

to mend paradise like an old rag that used to fit.

For awhile you’ll feel like a dying planet

on an artificial respirator in an abyss

so vastly indifferent and impersonal

it makes death look like a rank amateur.

And then your mind vitrifies

and space turns to glass

and time blows bubbles you’re trapped inside

like insight in a multiverse of crystal skulls

and for two or three weeks

you shriek like a mystic to reach

the highest celestial note in your repertoire

that might be able to shatter it

but it’s not until you lose your voice

that it usually does like a koan

that gives up on trying to understand you.

Child, it’s ok to break.

Throw that rock through the window.

Add that flame to the pyre or the stake

depending on whether you’d prefer to be cremated

standing up or lying down.

Get off that planet. Stop wasting

good oxygen on a lost cause

that doesn’t know how to breathe for itself.

Get out of the egg, the net, the noose

and see how big the sky and the sea are,

how good it feels to spread your wings

and feel the delirium of the wind gusting under them

as if it were high on stars,

how pretty your neck is

when it’s not wearing

the usual, brutal jewellery of a punching bag

like a tear-shaped locket

trying to hide your shame

like a bruised pearl from prying eyes.

Child, it’s ok to break.

Like seeds and hearts and cosmic eggs,

you break, and then you rise.

PATRICK WHITE