Split
Written by Kelly Ann Wilson

You split yourself into two people,
Right down the middle.

The one who feels it
And the one you need to be to survive.

You learn to make who you once were
So small and so quiet
Until only a ghost of you remains.

And he is only the place
Where the splitting starts.

You do it it to laugh and play with the tiny humans,
Desperate to protect them from ever knowing
That something so cruel
Exists in the same world as they do.

You do it to reach out and lift up
Those who you notice are suffering
All the while carefully ensuring
They never come to realize
That you are living a nightmare too.

You do it to show up
At the weddings and baby showers
Wearing a summer dress as the thinnest veil
Of the way you’re dying inside.

You do it every time your good-natured village
Marks every milestone and anniversary
As if anything to celebrate
Remains between you two.

You do it again when people
You spent your whole life believing
Would be horrified by what he has done
See his violence with their own eyes
And say right to your face, “that isn’t violence.”

You do it again when you still see them
All of the time and everywhere
People who choose to believe you somehow
“Put them in the middle,”
Without giving any thought to how fucked up it is
That they even see a middle to be put in
Between a victim and an abuser.

And one more time to live
In the only world available to you,
One where men hate women so much
They kill them.

And with anything you have left in you,
You split yourself
To save someone else
While holding the excruciating truth
That you can never go back
And save yourself.

You split yourself into two people,
Right down the middle.

And you live just half a life.

Written August 2, 2024
© 2024 Kelly Ann Wilson