Here’s what I have learned.
The holes don’t go away, but something else moves in.
You’ve been hollowed out, a cracked
oak yanked wide
open by unyielding, unforgiving hands,
They don’t care what they break as they
scoop out the most precious, spongy
part of you
and squeeze.
As the footsteps fade,
and the ache deepens
you wonder what is left of you.
You wonder and you wonder and all
you can do is sip cool life into your roots
in tiny unbearable spurts
until you stop shriveling into nothing
and hold steady.
Here’s the thing they don’t tell you:
The holes don’t go away, but something else moves in—
if you let it.
You have a choice not to let it.
You have a choice to remember that spongy
beating heart and remember how
alive and wondrous and
irreplaceable
it is.
You have a choice. And that choice,
It isn’t wrong.
But… if you let it die. When you know
for good and true, love
has forgotten you.
When you let the wind kiss and echo
through that hollow in the center of
everything that makes you,
you.
When.
Then, perhaps,
something else can ask for permission
just for a moment, to try that space.
To see how it
fits.
To see how
the echo of loss muffles when a
breathing thing sits quietly
ruffling its feathers in contented
silence. To just
sit.
Sit and see… sit and
feel how the air warms
and the silence sweetens,
sit and see what happens
when you let an unrepairable wound
breathe.
Be… can you bear it—
touched.
And soon… so slowly soon
in a long slow blink
you realize
you can’t imagine breathing
without this new, beautiful
equally breakable thing nestled
in the center of everything
that once was.
The hole didn’t go away.
But something else—
something else made it home.
And so, here
we are
together.
