Remember the first time,
the beginning,
when insistent eyes met mine,
stared deep into my guts and twisted them up inside
with words both wonderful and wounding –
an effort his mouth recognized from a long time ago.
The wounded became the wounder,
and I was willing to be wounded too,
and to wound.
His love created a tension,
alive in my breath,
suspended in mid-air –
a quick inhale
and a slow exhale.
It was a fall from heights I have not been since,
for I no longer desire to heal what I cannot
and then to feign martyrdom.

//Martyr, 5/20/2019
//Collette Kristevski

Hello friends! I know it’s been a while. I’ve had quite the stressful couple of weeks. We found a house and we close on June 7th, so I’ve been dealing with all the inspections, fixes, paperwork, packing, etc. that comes with that. I didn’t realize it was such a process. My pet rabbit is also sick and has been to the vet 3X since last weekend and has a myriad of medications that need to be given, including daily injections. All of that while also wrangling a toddler all day can be quite tiring. But I decided to take a few minutes to finish this poem that’s been sitting unfinished for a few weeks. You know that saying “Hurt people hurt people”? I’ve found that saying to be quite true. I have been the hurt and the hurter, and I’ve let that cycle influence my relationships in the past. This poem is about one particular relationship in which this cycle was clear as day from the beginning, but I chose to ignore my gut about it and enter into it anyway. I thought I was superwoman – that I could heal him and myself and not fall. Two years later and still in the relationship I was more broken leaving it than I was entering it. Thankfully, even in that broken place there was beauty to be found. I am oddly grateful, though I’ll admit that forgiving myself for my bad choices and mistakes in all of those relationships, but especially this particular one, is still difficult.