Open Hands

I have been both the wound

and the weapon.

There was a time

when i was small enough

to believe every raised voice

was thunder,

every open hand

a prelude to a strike.

So I learned to survive.

I learned the shape of a blade

before i learned the shape of safety.

Learned how to hold my breath,

how to bare my teeth,

how to turn softness

into something sharp enough

to keep the world away.

I carried that knife for years.

Not always in my hand-

sometimes in my mouth,

sometimes behind my ribs,

sometimes hidden beneath

the words i said

when someone came too close.

And then you came.

You did not come with a weapon.

You came with an open hand.

And God,

I wish i had known

the difference.

Because I saw a hand reaching for me

and remembered every hand

that had ever hurt me.

I mistook kindness for a trap.

patience for prelude.

Love for the thing

that would eventually become pain.

So I drew my blade.

You were only trying to help.

And I-

who had spent half my life

swearing I would never become

the people who hurt me-

stood there with blood on my hands

and called it survival.

That is the part

no one tells you about surviving:

Sometimes the armor

doesn't know when the war is over.

Sometimes the sword

doesn't know it has been sheathed.

Sometimes the wounded

becomes dangerous,

not because they want to hurt anyone,

but because they have forgotten

what an open hand looks like.

I have been both the wound

and the weapon.

I know now

that being hurt

does not make me harmless.

It only explains

why I learned to hurt back.

And perhaps healing

is not pretending

I was never the blade.

Perhaps it is learning

to set the knife down-

even when someone reaches for me

with nothing

but love

in their hands.