After Breaking

For Miz Quickly’s Impromptu Poetry Day 20: prose poem
http://imprompt.wordpress.com/

For The Sunday Whirl: Wordle 105
http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/  shipped, shelter, shock, bomb, promise, struggle, spent, infidels, land, resilience, against, thrive, harden

For Poets United Poetry Pantry #147
http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/

For Far Write writing group, two words: resist, extend
and phrase triggered by thundering voice

After Breaking
(Response 2)

Thundering voice triggers bomb blast inside head, avalanche of images and memories. For several moments, couldn’t move, reliving time inside Women’s Shelter: helter-skelter struggle to offer safety in a world where little exists. Hours spent listening to stories
pouring from battered lips once kissed by well known offenders. Shock of recognition,
knowing that story was my own, had happened inside my home, sometimes in front of my
children.  Often wished to ship us all to a calmer land, where soothing sun and softly
lapping water might heal invisible scars we all carried. Hard to resist, to not harden heart against thriving love and marriages ‘made in heaven.’ But it was there I began to learn
about resilience: coming back after being beaten down, finding strength in all those broken places.

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Notes: As I said earlier, prose poems do not come easily to me. Yet, after really struggling with Brenda’s wordlist, and reading all the prose poems responding to the prompt, these words didn’t want to go anywhere else. I did work in a Women’s Shelter, specifically asked by The Director because of my own background and history. She and I had met as non-traditional college students and I guess she thought I’d be a good role model. One of the first things I did after filing for divorce was to apply to the University near where I lived. It is also the reason why my first response to the Day 20 prompt was taken from that particular book by Susan Still, A Commune of Women.