Pick Yourself Up



890 words 


That is when I picked you up. You had hit the ground and the cold cement was wet from your blood and the rain. Your palms ached from hitting the ground. The pain sharp and stinging. Your knees scrapped deep enough you did not want to move them. You wanted to lay there, you wanted to sink into that wet cement and let the world suck you up and drink down all your pains and woes. You wanted it all to end, just be over, to just let the light take you and drink you into its warm embrace. But only the moon shone here, you were safe from the light.

Part of you wanted to cry, but you weren’t used to crying. Crying was a foreign idea, sure you had seen others do it, but it was not something you had ever really been allowed to do, not in this lifetime. So you did not cry, but then how would you find release in this brightest most painful moment in your life. But you had survived it, you had pushed your way through and it was over. For now.

Over sounded so good, so pure, so momentarily necessary. The grit nuzzled into your hair as you turned your head and blocked out the light. You survived, but did it leave you with the ability to keep surviving. How deep into the cement would you have sunk? How long would you have lain there not weeping into the ground? How long, how deep, if not for me.

But there I was crackling in the light. Filled with enough indignation for all of us. My hands pressed firmly into the cement and the warm skin I felt contacting you burned brighter and wetter. Your teeth ground and your eyes tightened as I reached deep and pulled you up. You were not meant to be on the ground. I could not allow it to continue.

I could see the fire surge back to life as I held you up and we looked at the world together. A world that was filled with pain and not too recent suffering, but we could take care of that, I could take care of that.

Your heartbeat was a steady rhythm and it entranced me. It had been so long since I felt its like. A hard thrumming that pumped blood through your veins like a small electric shock that just kept snapping me back to life. You breathed deeply and coughed out a sigh, perhaps trying to clear the memories of this night away.

But you did not need to worry because I was here now, I was holding you up, I was the darkness to hold you safe from the burning lights of the world. Those that had hurt you would never hurt anyone again, I was here, I had picked you up, I would smash them against the rocks of my rage and their life raft would splinter and everything they were would drown in the foam.

You would go about your life, you would smile again and that smile would stay, because I was here, I had picked you up, I would be the vengeance you needed. The cobwebs they had cleared would once again be spun around and around to sparkle in the dew and darkness. 

You had made a mistake, perhaps several, but nothing that had happened was your fault. You never hear that so let me say it again, nothing that happened was your fault. It never was, it never would be, pull the poison of your self-doubt out and let it drain upon the ground because this is not your doing, but the doing of the horrible in the world.

The wet cement scraped against your feet and the world was cold inside the t-shirt that was all you wore. The night was young to have already hammered you with so much suffering. You squeezed your fingers tightly open and let the air dance around them as they dripped water. Your legs shook as your arms moved to tighten around your body.

Your world blinked.

Don’t worry you are safe.

I picked you up.

Safe in the darkness.

You are on your feet again.

I made you safe.

Your world opens.

Your legs stood firmly your arms at your side. A momentary confusion, wasn’t the moon just up? Wasn’t the night still young? Why did it feel old, near complete? Where had the night gone? You stood unmoving staring up at the fading stars, the grass beneath your feet, tickling and wet with dew. So soft, so alive.

I let your hand go now that you were safe, now that you did not need me, now that you were safe from the light.  They were all gone, you would never cry because of them again. You lifted your hand as the sun crawled up from the horizon. The blood covering your fingers was not yours, the blood crawling along your arms and up your shirt was not yours. I had wiped them all away, I had cleared the board, and you would now be able to start again.

My namesake who shares my souls, who let me in, who made me home, who is there in need of my hand to pull them up and make them safe.







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