Days Like These

Days like These

These days

I teeter between joy and sorrow

In search of a center to balance the two

So I allow myself to take a second to sit in both

First joy- sweet to taste, warm to touch,

hugs and hands held and the sound of laughter

bouncing from one sense to the next-

LIGHT! I burst, I beam -I don’t ever want to leave

But I shift… because joy can be blinding in its brightness,

it can remove you from the reality of life’s many hues

I welcome in sorrow,

witness it make current time slow,

calling forth the past to take over,

memories appear rapidly surrounding my body

that brings me to my knees,

silence becomes prayer-

it reminds me of my breath,

it reminds me how human I really am

I inhale the sensation that occurs in mixing the two

Taking in bursts of joy and

slow strokes, strikes, shakes, and stings of heartache

I recall all memories of you,

Your touch, your smile, your presence, your truth

In this experimentation

this combination

This alchemy of joy and sorrow becomes

the most unbearable grief

See this inbetween, this center

That I find myself walking and living in these days-

This inbetween is where the heart breaks

Between fire and water

Between bliss and pain

I witness the breaking of my heart and

the freedom of your spirit

that has found a home inside of me.

Being let free to go where it needs

“For your life lived in me

Your laugh once lifted me

Your word was gift to me”

This is why memories of you

Are like gravity

That pull me into a reality of

the joy you are in my life

and what sorrow it is to let go of that.

And I sink into this grief

My face streaks

as I empty myself of what has been

our happiness together

I feel how my spirit is tripping

on my own self- worth and self- knowing

Clumsily I chase the joy and with it

I carry the sorrow

Simultaneously they create

a dance of discomfort and dis-ease

I trip on myself

And I fall,

And I fall

And I fall

This grief

That pulls me downward

Face heavy

Head into my hands

Heart into stomach

Body crouched, curled into mother earth’s cradle

Sorrow streams through me

Water

Falls

When the heart truly grieves

it does not ask permission

It sheds tears,

It sheds skin,

It sheds walls,

It shakes your being

Break up, Break down, Break through

The Heartbreaks

And the foundations that you have built

to keep you grounded,

Have to be removed and replaced

So you can stand firmly on

the pavement of your journey once more

I breathe and look at the pieces around me

Piece by piece I rebuild what has been broken

Whether it be

bones or heart, or mind, or spirit broken

I work to re-member who I am.

On these days

In this labor of love lost-

I sweat my tears

flooding the ground beneath my toes

What will come from this…

I make way for Metamorphosis

I will never be the same again

In a cycle of life and love and light.

I opened myself to the

uncertainty,

innocence

and the vulnerability, of loving.

And today I am left certain in my loss

But I will open myself to what is unknown again.

My only knowing is that

Every beginning will come to an end

and from an end a new beginning

It will catch me

It will lift me

I believe

That

From heartbreak, a greater love will come

From death, new life will be born

From once where I was empty, I will again be filled

From darkness surrounding me, light will brighter shine

And a new day will be mine

Days like today will surely come,

But only to be followed with days of sun