Name: Janine K.

City: Flagstaff, AZ

Brain Injury: TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY (TBI)

Explanation of mask:  
FACE IN THE MIRROR
Before and After

You tell your family
the invisible scar
dividing past
and present, heart
and brain
into hemispheres
tattoos the memory
of a journey
down the Amazon
where you met
a tribe of healers
whose ceremonies
and rites of passage
tested your courage,
teaching you a new language.

You face the dark
night of the soul,
blink at the white day
with its blind stars,
searching
for the hidden face of God
near the fabled healing rivers of love
whose Beatitudes
wash away anger, fear,
and despair, wash away
that once-upon-a-time
familiar face in the mirror.

You leave this rainforest
of suffering
naked, new-born
an explorer discovering
how to love this new way of being
how to map its scars into beauty
how to say:
Love me. Love me
today as I am.