Holding tight to the legs of all my Angels, Goodbye my love.

This one isn't for you - it is for me....
I am bare, literally - the wounds of verbal abrasion have removed all traces of skin.
What is left of me is my prevailing spirit and my writers mind.
I thought earlier tonight - I totally get why the brain makes alternate personalities - why some people split into multiples....
It is because eventually there is no unscathed place left for that personality to retreat - every bit of their existence is marred and scarred with pain.
I am on the verge of losing part of me, she is going instead to that hallowed ground within my soul.
I am okay with losing her - I hope she will be okay without me.
She is Dan's wife.
God help her, she has suffered.
I have suffered.
I am bare, literally - I am wet with tears that won't stop and sweat that bleeds from every pore - it smells of shock, regret and disrespect.
It smells of sadness - like the underside of a lonely rock left in shade of a massive drooping tree of a un-walked, quiet forest - it is dense with dampness of alone.
My spirit sags with my body parts that I have folded up around me, I need to sleep, but the bed screams their names to me and his snoring smells of beer, not conducive to rest, not an unmarked territory left to fetal position in.
Again, the brain is so kind to spare some minds the reality of 'honey you've had enough'....
I wonder if I will remember her when she is good and gone?
Will she talk to me from the recesses or will she be bound and gagged like always?
She is a strong girl that one, tough as nails to have been able to live this long pretending to have human dignity while all the while in the safety of her home a trapped animal spitting and hissing in the corner, cowering while she prepares for the next kick to her rib cage.
She did as good as she could - pretty well for the elements and the lack of dermis.
And she hears Dr.King in her head tonight, that Mother cub with the chest wound, she hears his voice echo loud in the space clearing up for the new person -
"I have a dream" and they recite Langston Hughes aloud, taking turns line by line.
Her exit speech - her baton to be passed to the leg man - "What happens to a dream deferred?"
Sag a heavy load or does it explode?
And she laughs rhetorically at the hand off - the crazy laugh that always comes at the end of a good crying jag - she laughs maniacally as she slaps the torch hard and burning in my palm - and she winks
No more dreams left under mossy rocks - "you got it Phoenix?"
Yes I got it - you did all the hard work and now I run for the win - I got it.
No more unturned stones for us.
I want her to be okay.
I want more than anything for her to find relief.
Poor thing has been so abused, her abuse negated with ignorance and denial.
Corners get hard to stretch out in and spitting is tiring especially when it fails to keep the blows from landing their target.
She did good.
And I feel her pulling apart from me, I feel her taking leave, I feel her fleeing, I feel her finding the darkness where his voice won't ever hurt her again.
She pauses, looking over it all, the colors, the textures, the layers upon layers of her endurance - she is standing at the canvas with her mouth agape.
She touches it one last time and I feel it on my skin.
Her touch is wet and smells of salt, sweat so pervasive it envelops us both.
I will take it from here, no more pain for you now.
Let it all just fade away - step off the curb, dive off the cliff, step into the rain.
I will take it from here and you go now, the soul space is waiting.
Godspeed Mrs.Poulin, Godspeed.