When a Good Friend Calls & I Do Not Have the Strength to Answer

I unbury the girl,

drag her tiny limbs from the earth-rot in my chest

where I keep her hidden.  

She wakes with a sharp sob,

toddles aimlessly in the dark room,

then folds onto the floor under the heavy shell on her back

& cannot muster the strength to get up again.

So, I soothe her, holding myself softly by the ribs at night,

until a dawn-haze floods the room,

lifting the shell off her unscathed, fleshy body,

as we face each other naked in the light.

Her name is my name, but we are not the same person,

not quite,

though both in need of the same help, the same hug,  

both experiencing the same hurt, differently.

The girl starts to cry in a way that I won’t let myself,

answers the phone to my friend that calls,

who is lost, trying to comfort the girl who sounds like a woman

because she speaks with my bass,

the girl who will inherit my sadness & all the mistakes

I am too small to face.

It is the girl, in the end, who endures this heartache,

who puts down the phone, and says with astounding certainty

“this will be ok”, before crawling back into her shell,

back inside my body, where I hold her and she holds me

more kindly now.