If you wear your wounds

Like an old dress

Too short

Too tight

Cutting into your arms

Know that dress is not you

It was meant to be discarded

At the moment you outgrew it

Don’t cling to that dress

Just because you think

You have nothing else to wear

Or because you’ve come to mistake that dress

For your own skin

Tight and raw

Prickling at a child’s reproachful look

Or a spouse’s off-key remark

Your vocation is not pain-master

Holding yourself together with safety pins

You have bigger, grander things to do

Than jab yourself with needles dulled with use

As you mend and mend again 

The same split seams

Let that dress fall

Or wriggle out of it

Or cut yourself free with the same blade

You’ve applied to yourself all these years

Feel the real pain of this moment

The beautiful, throbbing ache of your true longing

Free from the ghosts that whisper “boo”

Just when you’re about to risk 

An intimate moment with creation

Undefend yourself

Celebrate the kiss of life against your bare skin

Weep with relief

As you feel the depth of your desire

To say Yes

To sway in time with creation

(Howard Jacobson)