When I lost myself:
I am extinct.
No part of me goes forward. 
I am ashes
Underground.

My stories silenced.
My mutating memories
dismissed.
My sorrows and joys erased:
blankness bracketing grief.

When I First Returned
My death still bled
into a suppurating
numbness,
and terror.

It didn’t feel like a choice:
study the wound
or disappear.
I agreed to look.

Now
I stand beside the river
I came from and will return to; 
I look into it,
still learning to swim.