After Everythijg

I learned young how to read a room

Before I ever learned to leave one

Watch the eyes, watch the hands

Hear the truth beneath the tongue

I can feel a storm before it breaks

Know a goodbye before it comes

Funny how they call that intuition

When you learned it just to survive someone

I’ve been somebody’s good girl

Somebody’s problem too

Somebody swore they knew me

While I was disappearing from view

I gave forgiveness like loose change

Till my pockets all went bare

Now I’m a little more particular

About who gets to find me there

I’m hard to kill softly

Hard to keep down

I’ve crawled out of places

I don’t talk about now

Still wear my heart open

Just closer to the bone

I learned you can love somebody

And still leave them alone

I’ve mistaken being needed

For being loved a time or two

Made a home inside a person

Who was only passing through

I kept asking better questions

Thinking truth would set things right

But knowing why somebody hurts you

Doesn’t make the hurting light

Oh, I can explain your childhood

Your motives and your fears

I can trace your every fracture

Back through twenty goddamn years

But baby, understanding

Ain’t the same thing as excuse

And I’m done making poetry

Out of people who abuse

I’m hard to kill softly

Hard to keep down

I’ve crawled out of places

I don’t talk about now

Still wear my heart open

Just closer to the bone

I learned you can understand somebody

And still tell them to go

Pour something slow in the glass now

Let that old piano play

I’ve got ghosts that like the nightlife

But they don’t get a vote these days

I’ve got scars without a funeral

Names I rarely say aloud

And a strange little habit of laughing

When I probably should break down

Maybe that’s not being broken

Maybe that’s just being grown

Maybe strength ain’t standing fearless

Maybe strength is going home

Home to the dog on the pillow

Home to the fire burning low

Home to a yard beneath the starlight

Where nobody needs to know

Why sometimes I get real quiet

When the whole damn world feels loud

I spent years explaining myself

I don’t owe explanations now

I’m hard to kill softly

Hard to fool twice

I paid for my wisdom

And baby, it wasn’t cheap advice

Still reckless with wonder

Still tender somehow

Life tried its best to make me bitter

But look at me now

I still stop for old furniture

Still wonder whose hands touched the wood

Still think damaged things are beautiful

When the bones underneath are good

Maybe that’s why I kept believing

Everybody could be saved

Maybe I saw their hidden beauty

And forgot to check how they behaved

That one took me forty years

And several spectacular mistakes

You can see the good in somebody

And still hate the choices that they make

So here’s to every version of me

Who stayed because she hoped

Who confused carrying everybody

With proving she could cope

I don’t hate her for her choices

She got me all the way to here

But I don’t need her job anymore

She can finally disappear

I’m hard to kill softly

But softer these days

I don