Poetry of Stephanie Bennett Henry

Give Me Broken Roads

I don’t want a journey that’s smooth sailing, unfailing, a straight path that never crosses over into crooked lines or hard times. No. Give me the broken roads, paved with lessons only found in the pain of falling through the cracks to rock bottom. Let the sharp of every edge touch me hard enough to leave a mark, let every mark teach me how to bend every edge smooth, until it crumbles into stones I use to stand on. I want to be both feet in, hands filled with my whole heart in pieces, cracked and bleeding. Give me every crack to stand on without the fear of falling. Give me every sky to fly in without the fear of flying. Show me the way the storm gets a rise out of the ocean and let the ocean take me under to teach me how to taste the salt in every wound before it heals. Let me love so hard, I always break from holding on and break again when I let go, and let my pieces forever linger between butterflies and edges of promises before they broke.

Let every stone I stand on break a thousand times as I climb mountains to prove how much I want it. I’ll plant patience like flowers at the top as a sign that I made it, and leave a garden paying it forward to anyone who comes behind me.

Let me look back at my life and see an adventure, where I was always on the edge of my seat, waiting to see the sky fall again and again to test the weight of all I can carry and invite me to fly there. And I will fly there with grace, using the wings I earned from my own strength, resilience, and unapologetic determination. And let me soar there forever, leaving a trail in the sky that spells out my name like fireworks that always sparkle, stars that always hold wishes, and a sky that promises to never fall again. Because I made it. I made it.

Stephanie Bennett-Henry


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