Worthless Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

You crawl back into my thoughts, persistent,
ready to remind me of your dim world
where love and laughter were nonexistent,
where my small self was vulnerable, curled
into a corner, a cavern of fears.
Your words like knives tearing into my soul,
polished in the blue spill of plaintive tears.
Your sharp edges diminishing me - whole.

I know who you are; I cannot forget
a lineage of loneliness and pain.
There's no room for you here anymore; yet,
you disembark from the passenger train.
Your baggage is heavy, filled with the past.
The sun settles into a ring of stones.
I know that tomorrow could be my last,
and the house that you haunt is in my bones.

I was worthless, a daughter in exile,
an outcast then and lifetimes to follow,
the sadness scripted in back of your smile,
the joyless husk of a heart born hollow.
Each word was a missive of cindered night.
The shadowed mesa was fractured like skin.
I see you and hear you. Where is the light?
I find no comfort to have you within.

I pour out my spirit, the universe.
Cobwebs latch onto the bittersweet years.
I forfeit my dreams, the gold in my purse,
the echoes that linger upon my ears.
We passed through this life and shifted with change.
We tasted everything that time could bring.
We unfolded wings the breadth and the range
riding the wind as though an offering.

I set you free among the blooms resigned
to revel in time's immutable dust
with the salient hope of heart and mind
that crossover carrions fade to rust.
Let loose your willows, your cascading hair,
burn all of your sorrows into the sea.
Nothing is worthless - no one, anywhere.
I am of value, and you were to me.