Dear sister

“Sometimes I thought that God gave us sisters just to hold our hands when we felt small.” — Rose Christo

Dear sister:
I befriended you when we were so small we whiled our afternoon-lives away at the daycare.
Do you remember?
When evening fell, we waited together for our mother to bring us home.
Back then, fierce as a lion cub, I had thought:
This is my sister. I must protect her and look after her.
I wear my identity, elder sister, like a Girl Scouts badge, proud as a knight.

I led you behind me, bold as an adventurer exploring uncharted lands, everywhere.
Harry Potter, Eragon, Chronicles of Ancient Darkness,
playgrounds, movie theatres, shopping malls.
You lead me now —
eyes as bright as passion and enthusiasm allow —
identities, social politics, theories,
Percy Jackson, Captive Prince, Foxhole Court.

Have you ever wondered why friends are as close as sisters but sisters are never as close as friends?

Because —
A sister like a friend makes home warm and lit and cozy as a hearth warding off the winter chill.
A sister like a playmate makes home a place to chatter and play and imagine, filling your heart with cheer and noise after a long day of silence.
A sister like a sister makes home a home to return to, familiar and restful and comforting as a hug.

Dear sister:
I am beyond grateful and incredibly happy that we have befriended each other.
How will I describe the ball of warmth in my chest, happy as teddy bears and toy rabbits —
or the way my heart lightens and laughs and becomes young and playful —
or my irrepressible fondness around you, sunny as puppies tumbling and playing?

Dear sister:
This sistership means more to me than words can say.
Thank you for letting me bare my heart,
and thank you for baring yours.

Yours,
your sister.

Blessings

Let me tell you a story.

I came across two best friends in fiction,
and oh, how I recognized what they had:
that ease which spoke of years-long knowing,
as clear as the connection
invisible in the air between them.

I look at them and recognize us.
And I marvel at how thirteen years of knowing and root-weaving
look on the surface.
But, like an iceberg,
that which is above the water is merely the tip.

The bridge we have built spans thirteen years.
It is more than words can contain.
But I will try.

This is how the story begins—
it started tentatively:
a mosaic bridge of shared circumstances and interests:
school, playgrounds, soft toys;
Naruto, Animal Ark, Pokemon.

Time passes
and the materials we use to build the bridge become
abstract as air and sure as earth:
love, listening, kindness;
humor, morals, characters.

I have always known that I was loved.
This was the soil my roots took hold in.
I can only hope that I have let you live the same
because you have let me feel unconditional love
and I will never forget that.

Whether it is
that night that you held my hand over text
even though we were two continents away
because my mind and heart were racing
and I asked;
or the times you let me cough and cough and cough up bitter deaths and grief and pain;
or the many thousand everyday instances
of feeling on my behalf;
or the free and insistent way
you give me a window
into your every momentous and mundane moment.

How blessed I am
to have what I have lived and loved;
how blessed I am
to be blessed and blessing.

You give me the gift of myself;
you hold a mirror up to me,
and the reflection I see—
the shape I absorb—
the self I witness—
is
so
much
more.

I too, hold your self in my cupped hands.
The good and the bad,
the best and the worst,
the forgotten and the past;
for safekeeping,
for recordkeeping,
for caretaking,
to return to you
in the times when you have lost your way.
When your eyes are filmed over
with self-doubt and self-hate,
look through mine, instead.
I offer you your self,
shaped with kindness.

These are my blessings to you:
May you enter every age loved and un-alone;
May you forget the shape of loneliness and un-love and learn instead the shape of love;
May you know always that you have a home in me;
May you always have a back against which you can rest your naked heart and soul;
May your days be laughter-light and hope-filled and passion-full and soft as love;
May you be wandering no longer but home;
May you soft-river your way into confidence and capability;
May the future frighten you no more because it has become a bright, soft thing.

The story comes to a close,
but
we have the rest of our lives ahead of us
to spin moments and mundanity and momentousness
into a longer and richer tapestry.
This true, sure thing between us will never turn into a bitter, empty grave.

And these are my last blessings for us:
May we always be a safe harbor and a touchstone-home to each other;
May we always take joy in each other’s presence;
May the world always coalesce into sense;
May we always be able to be more;
And may we always be returned to and regifted our best selves.

Redwoods

There was a time before we knew each other,
a time when there was no you in my memories and life.

But I do not remember it.
And I cannot imagine it.

Did you know?
In a forest, trees form independent root systems to withstand storms.
Every tree, that is, but redwoods.
Redwoods grow shoulder to shoulder and interlock their roots.
They stay upright because of each other.

So like two redwoods that had been planted side by side,
our roots began to stretch towards each other.
And our doors began to open to one another.

You live with a blizzard in your head.
I know that.
During the harsh winters,
everything collapses—
no sound nor light nor life nor breath seeps in or out.
It is deathly cold in the cave-in.
You are achingly alone.
what is up
what is down
what is you
what is hope?

But I am here.
Outside the door.
Knocking and waiting with soup in hand.

The me that you see is someone capable gorgeous confident intelligent amazing–
someone who can take on the world if she so wills it.
I am not her.
But where would I be if I am not reminded that I can be larger than life?
The real me is scared most of the time, and angry the rest of the time.
But you are a safe harbor where I can rest
and where would I be without this touchstone-home?

As I grow, I realize that the work of us
is one of the most vital and joyous tasks I’ve been given.
Put in a thimble and a thousandfold is returned.

In a forest, two redwoods planted side by side interlock their root systems to stand tall.
This is the only way they know how to survive—
to weather the storms or the bone-chilling blizzard.
And so it is with us.

Now, we have spent years growing beside each other, interlocking our roots.
The door is always open between us.
And the best gift of each other’s presence
is this:
we are intensely our best selves
and the world coalesces into sense.

fracture

A friend of mine described trauma as a fracture in the self.
See, she believes in love, in forgiveness, in healing, in trust.
But, see, that terrible event cleaved a part of her off and left it in the past.
Even as she believes in love, she fears.
Even as she believes in forgiveness, she angers.
Even as she believes in trust, she distrusts.

I am not so different.
Even as I tried to love you, I hated you.
Even as I tried to trust you, I resented you.
Even as I tried to accept you, I was angry with you.
How could I hate you but want you in my life at the same time?

This fracture in my self is as familiar to me as the pale oval of my face in the mirror every morning.
I loved you, cared for you, admired you, and liked you.
I hated you, resented you, felt so hurt by you, and felt so bitter towards you.
I lay these two truths before any of you,
and I ask:
which is the lie?
Let me put it another way:
how can they both be true?

I never understood this fracture.
I looked in the mirror,
and when I saw those cracks and tremors and splits,
I thought:
I am Frankenstein’s monster.
There is something irreparably and irrevocably wrong with me.

I tried to hide the scars.
I tried to be better, more, kinder, purer.
I tried to distill myself into only the untouched, uncomplicated parts.
And when people told me how kind I was
(my performance worked),
I only felt the rift between myself and the rest of the (perfect) world widen.
They look at me and see a human.
Whole, good, deserving.
I look at myself and see a monster.
Fractured, lesser, ugly.

With you, towards you,
the monster in my heart howled and howled and sobbed and wept.
It wanted revenge.
It wanted love.

I fought against the monster within me for years.
How tired I am.
How strange everything looks now.
When you have a sword,
everything looks like an enemy.
I wept with the monster as I hauled it back from you.
I howled with the monster as I stabbed it.
I raged with the monster as I tried, again and again, to kill it.
How strange that I slowly wither away alongside the monster.

The scars that marked me have another source:
a mind riddled with rot.
I knew
from a young age
that the fear and terror I feel
was too frequent to be normal.
The sick churning of my stomach,
the dread and panic,
the frequent utter black and icy terror,
none of it was normal.

I look at everyone around me.
The smallest things do not set them into a tailspin of fear.
They are laughing and joking,
normal,
when I feel like someone just told me:
you have been selected for a public execution.
Nearly everything sounds like a death sentence to me.
It would be funny if it were not so miserable.

So I learned too:
laugh, joke, put on a mask;
hide the terror, hide the dread, hide the fear.
Pretend, playact, perform
like you are an actor in a play.
You need to do more work than everyone else
because there is something wrong with you.
And you know what this means –
there is only one thing I can be –
I know what I am –
a coward.

I understood the chasm between myself
and everyone else
very well
from a young age.
They are human.
I am not.
I am ugly and cowardly and shameful with a monstrous face.

I hate that monster within me.
It is everything that is wrong with me.
Never let them see how monstrous you are.

I learned to protect myself the only way I knew:
silence and gates.
It was the only way I felt safe.

I built gate after gate after gate
and the real me
is at the heart
of this concentric collection of locks.
Most people stand at the millionth gate from the heart
and I show them only what I want them to see,
like showing them the photos that have my best angle.
Some people have gotten so close to me,
I can see them from where I am
locked away in the heart of everything.

I am tired.
I wish for someone to say to me:
you have fought well, little soldier.
You went above and beyond the call of duty,
you were valiant and brave, little lion-heart.
You deserve a medal.

I learnt fragmentation at a young age.
Instead of my shadow and I, forming a whole person,
it is the monster within me and I.
Give the “I” a medal and the monster is pushed back even further into the darkness.
Wrong.
It is all wrong.
The monster is me. I am the monster.
The “I” is me. I am “I”.

Someone asked me once:
what was the worst period of your life?
And I replied:
now, college, high school, elementary school. 
And they said:
so, the last ten years of your life?

When you spend as many years as I have
ruthlessly hacking away all the ugly parts,
painfully aware of every ugly fracture that no one must ever lay eyes upon,
fighting an unending war with the monster,
it becomes all you know of yourself, you know?
If you only feel happy,
you think,
I am a happy person.
If you only feel shame,
you think,
I am a miserable, cowardly, ugly person.

I spent so many years fearing myself.
What other ugly scars are hiding away?
What other shame have I not discovered about myself?

I do not really want to know.
I put all my energy into running away from myself even as I try to force myself into a better shape.
It is bad enough that I have a monster and mind-rots.
I do not think I can endure witnessing more proof of my fundamental ugliness.
It is heartbreaking enough that I am made so wrong.
I do not think I can stand seeing the abyss between myself and everyone else deepen.

How startling then
to realize that
I have already
seen the worst of me
and it is only human.

How startling then
to realize that
I have lived through
most of my worst fears.

How startling then
to realize that
my ugliest shame
is merely my softest vulnerability.

How startling then
to realize that
my misery was unchosen
and it is the site
of my greatest strength
in the time
of my greatest hardship and strife.

I cannot demonize myself anymore.
I cannot fracture myself anymore.
I cannot war with myself anymore.
If I am to survive,
let it be said:
I am only human
and I am enough.

I am a person with a shadow.
Only, my shadow looks like a monster
and maybe that is not a condemnation.

the shape of bitterness

I will never forget that night.

Some people have imaginary friends.
I have bitterness.
I do not remember a time before this old wound.
Others are brought up on the milk of their mother.
Me?
I am brought up on the dark ugly blood that is bitterness and loneliness.
The shape of self-hatred is more familiar to me than my own mother’s heart.

That night, I talk around the shape of bitterness.
I did not think of naming it.
When you live with something for this long,
you forget it is there.

But you sensed it.
You asked me, “Are you bitter?”
Hearing it from you
touched a nerve.
An explosion of that familiar fury-grief gripped me.
I could not quite control my voice.
“Of course, I am,” I laugh flatly, loudly. “But what is the point?”
Maybe only I could hear how my voice shook,
how tears threatened the iron grip I was keeping on myself.
I was grateful we had reached the cubicles –
you wanted to ask more –
and I pointed at the cubicles and said, “And now I am going to bathe.”
Flippant. Keep it flippant, or the old fury will explode.
And we cannot have that.

I wept in the shower.
Ah, how familiar I am with this.
I did it every day for a year.
Break down in the shower where no one can see you,
and emerge strong, dependable, confident.
It is even the same old voice scolding me:
you need to stop crying when you turn off the knob,
you need to look normal,
presentable. 

Well,
it hurt,
that old familiar pain
of folding my anguish into smaller and smaller folds
and putting it away,
but I emerged tearless,
the way I always do.

I waited for you.
Prayed you would not pick up the conversation thread.

Too much.
It is all too much.
My iron self-control had been worn to nothing
after a month of fear and grief.
The pain in my heart and mind were so much,
I could feel the tears pressing
in the back of my throat
against the backs of my eyes
even after I had swallowed them all in the shower.

And I hated that.
If I am to be worn down to nothing,
if I am to be broken down into nothing,
if I am to be lowest of the low,
at least let me have my pride.
Let me remain clear-eyed.

We walked back in the dark.
And
you
apologized
to
me.

Everything
in
me
stilled.

It was so much.
Hot tears welled up and fell like pain,
only this time
it felt less like heartbreak
and more like healing.
It hurt.
It hurts like the pain of lancing a pus-filled wound.
I am heartbroken all over again
and my heart is laid raw all over again
and I weep for everything I was forced through all over again,
but this time,
I cried with relief.

My voice emerged,
quiet and defenceless,
thank you.
thank you.

You let me talk throughout the night,
the old wound exposed,
I cough and cough and cough,
and so many black deaths come pouring out,
the same old fury and shame and bitterness.

My voice shook at the edges
from the fury-grief I was feeling.
It shook and shook and shook
and I kept pausing to grip it tighter,
praying it came out even.
I will be damned if I sound as ground down as I feel.

Tears burned again and again
as I remember your apology
and marvel at it all over again.
Relief. This feeling like heartbreak is relief and peace.
But I swallowed every tear back.
I was sick of crying.
I have cried enough this month to last me a year.

My voice shook again
as I said
I helped a friend unconditionally,
because
I (pause)
did not want (pause)
her (pause)
to feel alone (pause),
the way I do.
Trail off quietly
so no one can hear
the tremor and grief.

Sometimes,
I think
the loneliness
from my most vulnerable moments,
is tattooed onto my skin,
ground into my flesh,
tear-soaked into my cheeks,
and indelible on my bones.

Over dinner,
you showed me how my pain
was the site of my greatest strength against strife.
I –
here I go again –
I teared up.
I stared at my soup
through a blur.
At least my voice was controlled,
as I said,
thank you.

I am sick of the terms,
“being vulnerable”,
“opening up”,
“being closed off”.
Should,
should,
and should not.
This is how it always sounds to me.
I should be more vulnerable,
I should open up,
I should stop being closed off.

What does it even mean?
Am I even capable of this?
Do I even want to be?

I hate it
but I keep trying.
I do not want to disappoint
when I am already so disappointing.

I always thought:
I have not opened up enough with that one friend,
have not let her see enough of me,
have not let her in enough.
Enough, enough, enough. 
Always the litany in my head.

I showed you a message I wrote to this friend
about the shape of my bitterness.
And
how strange
that I never even thought
the message itself
was an act of honesty
and courage
and “opening up”
until you pointed it out.

I would never have done this before everything.

How strange
that I never realized
I was already trying.

You returned to me
myself
and
my power.

Nothing I did was ever enough for me,
as though I was looking at a fun house mirror.
But you showed me another mirror
and the “I” that I see
looks
so
courageous.

How blessed I am
that you love me so much
and you believe in fairness enough
to apologize to me
though it is no fault of yours.
I cannot say it enough:
thank you. 
You have given me the gift of peace.

How blessed I am
that you love me so much
to patiently listen to this outpouring of black deaths and smoke and bile,
to show me another reflection of myself
shaped by love
again and again
and I see how
human
I am.

Maybe I will never forget the shape of bitterness
but maybe I can learn the shape of love.

back to back

It is a story worth remembering:
you are the boy who does not respect his seniors.
Arrogant,
with a horrible personality,
who makes a hobby of laughing at people
and getting under their skin.
You are the boy who never takes anything seriously,
has not a shred of heart,
and lets others’ words slide off you like water off an oiled surface.
Your name is Miyuki Kazuya.

You meet the boy who befriended the wrong people –
he turned delinquent for,
wasted his trust on,
sullied his reputation for
these people
who used him
like their personal guard dog.
He comes to Seidou,
preceded by his unsavory reputation,
trailed by sidelong whispers,
judged by his hooligan-colored hair.
His name is Kuramochi Youichi.

The first day of school:
Kuramochi shifts from slouch to slouch with glares,
daring the rumors
daring the murmuring classmates
to come closer to him.
And you, Miyuki –
unaware or unconcerned –
you stroll right up to him
and ask him a wholly innocuous question –
will you join the baseball club? 
(He will never forget this act of friendship.)

A year later:
unbeknownst to you both,
or unnoticed by you both,
Kuramochi has given over his loyalty and faith to you
for safekeeping.
And you have allowed more of yourself to be seen
by Kuramochi
than anyone else.
(Because, you see,
Sawamura could never have gotten
this close
if you had not been used to it
because of Kuramochi.)

Here is how an average conversation between the two of you go:
You needle Kuramochi,
jab at his girlfriend-less shaped insecurity,
milk every centimeter you have over him for all it is worth,
and blithely insult his intelligence.
He responds beautifully,
exactly as you wanted,
with serious-faced death threats,
violent glares,
angry headlocks,
and dirty mutterings and curses.

Most people would miss the way
your eyes are dancing,
the way mirth lightens your face,
the way your heart calms and rests
in this comfortable squabbling.
(Kuramochi is a home, just like Sawamura.)
Most people would not see
the fondness that looks so much like glee.

And most people would miss
the way Kuramochi’s irritation
exists in the same space
as his care,
the way he can be angry in one breath
and worried in the next.
His concern
wears a mask of anger,
his fierce loyalty
looks like irritation,
and his affection hides in the lines of
his grumpy face.
He is as prickly as you.
Everything comes out
as though through a filter of aggravation.
But you understand him anyway.

Finally, you let him help you:
He fumbles,
clumsy as a novice
throwing a pitch
for the first time,
as he tries to understand the world you live in.
His mouth shapes itself awkwardly around your language,
his gaze pushes you,
urgent and fierce,
daring you to fight,
his hand always reaches out,
warm and solid on your shoulder.
When have you come to rely on this true, sure thing?

He keeps up with a world wholly different from his own –
for you, he says.
Because of you, he says.
You tease him for going soft,
and he glares at you to shut up,
but how unexpected that your heart lightens,
and you feel a little restored to yourself,
a little more able to challenge,
a little more willing to dare.

He sees you through and true.
And you love him, so much.

going home

Sawamura Eijun is lion-hearted, lion-eyed, and lion-fierce.
He barrels into your life
noisy and unapologetic and blundering
and he brings with him
so
much
warmth.

You love to tease him,
to see his face screw up adorably in indignation
as you lean away from the inevitable explosion of noise,
laughing,
while he shouts angrily,
MIYUKI KAZUYA!!!
Oh,
you have not felt this lighthearted
in a long, long time.

Over the years,
you have perfected the inscrutable expression on your face,
a right arm wall that prevents anyone from reading you
so you are never anything more than composed, amused, and contrary.

Sawamura disarms you.
Can people see your heart in your eyes, when you look at him?
Can people see the idiot softness in your smile?
Can people see the unbearably stupid fondness that has taken over you?

You fight to keep your right arm wall up,
but your heart is so stupid nowadays.
It always wants to show itself to Sawamura,
as though it wants to go home.

He looks at you and there is just
so much
in his eyes,
that you have to look away.
He looks at you like you are a gift he never thought he would have,
like you are his catcher,
like he loves you
with every ounce of passion
in his lion-fierce heart.
He looks at you
like he will never let you endure
anything
alone
ever again.

It is so much.

Being with him means everything changes.
You are full of fear.
Terror beats with every beat of your pulse.
It is hard to breathe.
You now have everything to lose.

But you are a challenger.
You never back down from a fight.
In fact,
the tougher the opponent,
the happier you are.

And so,
with every thing on the line,
with the rest of your lives at stake,
with love as the trophy,
you put on your catcher’s gear,
and you begin the hardest match of your life.

Lost child, dare

A l o n e are five letters beaten into your flesh, tear-soaked onto your cheeks, ground into your skin.

The year your mother disappeared, you became father mother grandfather grandmother uncle and aunt to yourself.
A veritable village.
Is it not funny how one child can turn into so many people?
That was the year you lived through by crying,
in the toilet between classes,
in the darkness before sleep,
in between every mouthful of the meal you burnt for yourself.

Before your mother left you,
she held your hand and whispered love with every word and smile and touch –
and she taught you baseball.
Her laughter rang through the air when you threw your first ball.
Her smile sparkled brighter than the sun when you caught the ball in your mitt.
Her words landed soft in your ears when you got a pitch just right.
She was the center of your world.

In school, baseball draws you like a moth to flame.
You feel your mother’s phantom hand gentle on yours as you hold out the catcher’s mitt.
Powerlessness disappears when you outwit opponents.
For the first time, you are someone no one can leave behind.

But you made a mistake.
You are too talented.
They pound and hit and jump on you
and you wonder if unlikeability hides between the very cells in your body,
flows through you like blood,
and resides in the air in your lungs.

So you remake yourself.
Indispensable on the field, indifferent off of it.
You turn your unlikeability into a weapon that you wield like your life depends on it.
You do not need anyone.
(If you do not need anyone, no one can abandon you ever again.)
You leave behind the lost, abandoned, terrified, loveless child.
You become Miyuki Kazuya, genius catcher.
Untouchable, unbeatable, invaluable.

Baseball becomes the event around which you organize your very self.
It is all that matters.
It is all that gives you joy.
It is all that sustains you.
You are nothing without it.
You push people away, uncaring and indifferent,
and you climb higher and higher.
You have baseball now.

The years pass and you are an expert now at wielding the distance between you and others.
Until him.
He is the sun, blinding and lion-hearted and ferocious.
He annoys you, or you annoy him, who can tell?
But you cannot help but admire his drive to improve.
You cannot help but admire his dogged persistence that fears nothing – not rejection, not failure, not heartbreak.
You cannot help but admire the invulnerable way he wears his heart on his sleeve.

Somehow, without your realizing,
his noisy shouting becomes endearing,
his idiot optimism becomes hopeful,
his blundering determination becomes touching.
Since when have his indignant faces become so cute?

He holds his heart out with both hands,
and he trusts you to cradle it,
and he knows you would hurt it,
but he loves you,
and so he holds it out anyway.
He wears his vulnerability like armor.
(How does he do it?)

Being loved by him is like standing in the sun
after a long, starving, bone-aching winter.
You unfurl.
You bloom.
You grow.
(Is this what it is like, to receive unconditional love – or to give unconditional love?)
He pours into the cracked parts of you like molten honey and holds-heals you.

You love him, so much.

So you lose him.

Because you cannot have him and baseball at the same time.
And you cannot lose baseball.

You are plunged into the icy shadows again.
The sun is gone.
Of course it is.
You knew you could never have kept it.
Happiness is not for people like you.
A lifetime of closing up, fearing the consequences, and choosing what you cannot live without cannot be undone so easily.
You cannot live without baseball.
(But can you live without Sawamura?)

You go through life like an automaton now.
Grief is like a ten-tonne weight making you move, slow as molasses, as though underwater.
Heartbreak splits your chest open and leaves your heart raw.
(You ache and ache and you miss and miss but you refuse to cry. You cried enough when you were younger to last you a lifetime.)
Fear steals your breath with every small whisper and you struggle just to breathe.
Love hides in every one of your thoughts,
and your heart keeps trying to leave your chest to go home to him,
where it belongs.

It is funny.
On the field, you are bold, strategic, risk-taking.
You fear nothing.
You are in your element.
Off of the field?
You are terrified,
broken,
and worthless.

In the quiet before sleep, when there is only the dark of your eyelids, you can admit to yourself:
I cannot live without Sawamura.

—–
You have a best friend
and he loves you in his gruff, rough way.
He follows pro baseball players who have come out –
For you, he says, because of you, he says.
He wants you to live unafraid,
like the bold challenger that you are on the field.
But bitterness pours off of you like laughter.
Look at me, you say. I am broken.
Give up on me, are the unsaid words. I am not worth it.
You try to push him away, just like you pushed Sawamura away.

But like Sawamura, he only moves closer.
When did you pick up idiots like that? you wonder despairingly.
(What is this feeling like love in your chest and tears in your throat?)
He glares at you and how strange that his anger looks so much like worry.
He gives you the gift of yourself:
Miyuki Kazuya, genius catcher.
Unbeatable, untouchable, invaluable.
Challenger.
You have never been someone who wants to be a part of the well-loved, well-known champions of old.
You have always been the underdog challenging the champion,
stealing the trophy from under their nose
because
you
dare.

Will you not dare, for the biggest and most insurmountable match of your life?
Will you not dare, now that there is a crack in the door?
Will you not dare, now that you have tasted the sun?

Oh, Miyuki, you have been lost and afraid and alone for so long.
Dare.
And come home.

 The humpback whale

I have spent my days
chasing after an elusive myth-dream,
possessed by a lust to own.

I thought:
If I have you, I am worthy.
If I have you, I am no longer powerless.
If I have you, I will have finally done something right.

I find an ivory tusk.
And I settle for it.
I crow with pride and make a special belt
so I wear it where everyone will see.
Look, the tusk proclaimed wordlessly, look at how good I am.

How foolish I am.

One day, during my travels,
I wander through the forest humming.

I glimpse –
a sliver of movement.
A vast shape slips past the tops of trees.
In the pearl-dewed morning light,
a humpback whale
as vast as the sky
soundlessly
and gracefully
dives through the air.
I do not glimpse all of you.
I do not need to.

You are nothing like what I thought you were.
You are not small and bound and owned.
You are vast and alive and powerful.

That day,
I touch the broad back of you
instead of fumbling around in the dark
thinking I own you, 
and I realize you are powerful empathy and compassion.
How blessed I am.

the silver snake

You have always shamed me. Most people have it straightforward.

Me? If my emotions are a clear river that I stand in, your blame is the quicksilver snake that glides beneath the surface, camouflaged by the sun-glitter off the water.

People whisper that to prevent the river from flooding, redirect the river, the way Hercules did.

I try, but when I dig a new pathway, something bites my ankle. Just as Esau fell to Jacob, so I fall. The water around me is stained red. Poisoned blood spreads. I drown beneath the rising water.

I am mired in pain. My mind is a landmine. Every thought is a buried explosion waiting to happen. I walk and walk and walk and there is no end in sight. Only pain and fog and pain. I cannot get out.

I am not angry. I feel gentle empathy. My arms are open, let me offer you a respite. You were driven by an impulse to good, to heaven. You wanted us to be worthy and enough. You thought that the more you whipped, the better I would become.

But I am only discovering the scars and sores and festers you have left me. I have been coughing up death after death after death. I am trying to bandage my wounds but sometimes I do not know how to heal, at all.

And I am so tired. And yet I know the salve can only come from my hand.

I am so tired. But I open my arms and unclench hands and offer you, myself, empathy, kindness and healing, again and again, however long it will take.