A Poetic Reflection: Glitter on a Bandage

In the spirit of embracing the raw truth of healing, I wanted to share a poem that delves into this very contrast. We often see the polished version of recovery, but true healing is rarely neat. This poem, “Glitter on a Bandage,” explores the space between the beautiful facade and the gritty reality, reminding us that courage often looks like peeling back the shine to face what lies beneath.

Glitter on the Bandage

They tell you healing is a sunrise filter, a soft-focus lens on a mended heart. They show you journals with perfect script, affirmations like whispered prayers.

It’s all glitter on a bandage.

A shimmering lie over skin still torn.

Because the wound doesn’t care for light. It aches in the dark, at 3 a.m. when the world is quiet and the silence is a scream.

It’s the trembling hand reaching for the phone, then pulling back, too heavy with shame. It’s the sudden choke in a crowded aisle, the frantic search for a public bathroom stall where the sobs can be swallowed whole.

The glitter falls away like dust.

And underneath, the bandage is stained, unclean, a testament to the fight no one saw.

They don’t show you the exhaustion, the bone-deep weariness of holding on when every cell wants to let go. They don’t frame the cancelled plans, the whispered “no” that feels like failure, the raw, exposed nerve of simply being.

This isn’t pretty. This isn’t pastel. This is the grit, the gristle, the tearing apart to build something real.

My healing is not a moodboard. It’s the ragged edge of a breath, the sting of truth after years of lies. It’s the quiet courage to peel back the glitter, to look at the wound, and finally, to let it breathe.

To let it bleed, if it must.

Because only then can it truly, fiercely, begin to mend.