What Remains Of My Wits?

By Elaine Lumière

The thing I feel the most shame and embarrassment about is my own writing.

I have written pages and pages that lay buried in drawers, in files, collecting dust and soot. I fear these pages will never be read because my fear, shame, and embarrassment of my own words seem to weigh me down, like a person trapped under a bookshelf that's fallen on them.

I need these words out of me but I am ashamed of my own fear. Even this-- the repetitive, redundancy. I feel like a fool. A woman trapped in her own mind, in her own body. I don't want to be here anymore but I fear that my spirit, my soul will die under this shame. But at other times I feel like a tree growing out of a cave with a trunk so bent and so starving for the sun.

I've drunk and smoked away so much of my ability that I've surrendered to shame. I don't know if I'll ever get it back. Certainly, the time is lost forever. 

I feel like a child bringing you a handful of crumpled flower petals from a neighbor's garden. 

Am I losing my mind? I've already lost my nerve. What remains of my wits?