Shells 🐚

Where can I write these words that you used to create a shell of me?

A witch of the ocean state, I’ve always loved shells, I never knew that one day I’d become one.

I never knew I had the capacity to be as empty as the wind. Hollow, cold, barren.

I left my body, my heart was abandoned.

Where can I write these words that you used to create a shell of me?

I knew that if I could hold onto at least one thread of myself then I’d be able to re-stitch me again, but sometimes, I lost that thread too.

Where can I write these words that you used to create a shell of me?

They don’t fit here or there, frankly, they don’t fit anywhere but back in your mouth stitched up by the thread that wove me back in place.

May my essence be a smile that you will never be able to erase.

This poem and these paintings are an interpretation of disassociation in response to domestic abuse, and an example of how sometimes even the smallest of things can give power.

Painting 1: watercolor 18x24 inches on multimedia paper.

Painting 2: watercolor 18x24 inches on multimedia paper.