Looking back over the scattered papers
twisted and crumpled on the master bedroom floor,
I see how a line from 1989 fits with one from 2004—
how another from '92 blends with one from the present year,
and so on and so on and so on,
page after page after page.

The seemingly disconnected words
become poetic puzzle pieces
and life reveals itself to be anything but random.
The days I divorced myself from
become cherished memories
and I'm anything but bitter
as I recall broken hearts
and dead-end dreams.

This once cavernous dressing chamber
has become just a room like any other,
yet the magic is still in the structure,
still coursing life through the beams.
So much has been gutted and altered,
but no one has rewired the electricity,
and nothing can rewrite the original meaning.
The destruction was an illusion.
The creator never left the scene.

The pages dance back into place,
straightened, with newly gilded edges,
opulence spilling over from expensive inks.
The writings of a mad woman
have transformed into art at its finest,
tales of lives lived,
of loves loved,
of losses left
for a fresh start
without confusion
about what it all means
and who deserves to share it with me.

The dreamer and the artist are finally fused,
as are the procrastinator and the overachiever,
the killer and the muse.