You Need to Connect with the Heroine of Your Story

The cards say it. The pointer on every spinning wheel.
What’s that meme? You are the one who is coming to save you.
Inside me lives a connoisseur of risk that for a time I chose not to heed.
Such finely tuned intuition moves beyond awareness of predator or prey.
I’m not innocent but I forget catalogues of lessons in order
to get through the day. She never left me. Rather I turned
from knowing. I thought I chose love, but it was a facsimile, a pack
of torture devices bundled in gauze. The heroine says one day you’ll see
this relationship as a vehicle for creative growth. We could have gone
on longer, my friends know. I stopped us. His friends might
have scoffed, he wouldn’t hurt you, but he had no friends and he had already
hurt me. The heroine isn’t writing about bruises but a topography of pain.
What is it they say? Some things you can’t unsee. You can’t unfeel.
The low voice at the table, wise hands on my shoulders.
The heroine says don’t think about all you ignored, but that you finally saw.