How To Gorw Old Properly

**Mercy at Twenty-Three** When I look at you, I don't see saving I see a hand reaching through the smoke You don't fix me like some holy answer You just sit beside the parts I broke You fit into the fracture so gently Like light through a boarded-up room And I wonder how long I was living Like a man who had mistaken grief for truth I was young enough to call it love When it only knew how to bleed I held on like a starving man To anything that would hold me When I was twenty-three I loved a woman like a wound I gave her every room in me And slept outside the door If I had known How long a ghost can breathe I would have laid that love down gently I would have laid it down in mercy My mother came home with her shoulders burning My father wore silence like a coat They gave me bread, they gave me shelter But not every child survives on hope They loved me in the only language That tired people learn to speak But I was waiting by the window For someone to come looking for me So when she smiled like an open doorway I walked in without a key I mistook the fire for morning And the smoke for being seen When I was twenty-three I loved a woman like a wound I gave her every room in me And slept outside the door If I had known How long a ghost can breathe I would have laid that love down gently I would have laid it down in mercy She had rain in her voice when she promised forever She had leaving already in her shoes We danced in a kitchen with unpaid bills To a song we were too young to use I said “stay” like a prayer in a bad year She said nothing, but I understood Some people don't break your heart with cruelty Some people break it doing the best that they could I don't blame her like I used to I don't worship what we lost I was not born broken But I paid a lonely cost And my parents were not villains They were tired, flesh and bone Everybody loves imperfectly When they were never taught at home Now I am more than twenty-three I loved a woman like a wound But I forgive the boy I was For confusing pain with proof If I had known That mercy starts with me I would have laid that love down gently I would have let the ghost go free Now the evenings come earlier But I do not fear the dark I call my mother on Sundays I let my father keep his scars I fold regret with the laundry I leave the window open wide Some things never stop hurting They just stop asking to drive Maybe this is growing old properly Not untouched, not clean Just carrying what tried to kill me Without becoming mean I think that I learned something It was not all for nothing I think that I learned something It was not all for nothing