The Cure for Anything

Do you remember the first
lightning bug
you accidentally killed?
How you squeezed it too hard
in your fist because
you wanted to keep it long enough
to show us?
No one knows what you did with
the light, or where your hand
has been since it happened,
but they’re all curious.

When did it get bad?
When did your voice turn into an
answering machine?
There’s a man at the door who wants
to save your soul. Says he’s been
looking for you,
that God sent him a message telling
him you needed his forgiveness.
The act. The circus of it all.
I’ll tell him to come back later.

Do you remember when you cracked
open by accident,
spilled your firefly sun all over my floor
like it was wine?
I do. I saw it. Proof that you
were still here,
glowing somewhere that you
forgot you could reach.

Tell me about everything you buried
and how it came climbing out of
you with a vengeance. Tell me about
beauty and the beast, the hand and
the fist,
how you remembered you could be
both the thing that opens and the
thing that closes.
Come to me.
Forgive yourself for the things
that turned you into a ghost.
Let me watch you love yourself
solid again.