The Woman

The Woman

She was already broken
when I met her
sitting on a park bench
in the spring.

Love gone bad, really bad.
The kind where the one
you embraced wholeheartedly
turns rogue, and
begins to slice your life in pieces.

A mound of damage done
before she could effect
the unembrace.  Shocked,
bewildered, but
far from shattered.

I loved him, she said,
I loved him so much.
She said it like
it should have been enough.
Her love.  But it wasn’t.

I wanted to say
she probably had an enormous capacity
to love,
and would one day meet her match.
The match that wasn’t him.

Instead I chose
to offer the depth of silence
as a panacea
for the wildness of words
already swirling in her brain.

And perhaps the unspoken
empathy I held
willed the thought
of new possibility
into her consciousness.

Because she finished speaking,
looked me in the eye,
and said, “It’s okay.  I’m okay.”
And I saw the wisp of a half-smile escape,
like a lock of hair loosed from its band.

Determined to be free.