Passing Reflections

What Price

April 15, 2001

What a price to pay
for finding my voice.
A life lived timidly,
fearful of my own shadow,
always anticipating disaster,
guard up,
hatches battened down.

Now, losing one of my anchors
and the reason I kept afloat
all these years
parenting my beautiful boys,
what is left to protect?

The voice I held inside
is finding new power,
new life
in the midst of these ruins.
And like the phoenix,
fear is gone.
Would not have chosen it
this way
if I could.