Freeing, after decades thinking this is who I am,
how I’m flawed, knowing now the ways trauma
deforms, diminishes, defines,
not the person, but responses.

Finally seeing internal debates
resolve from how-could-I questions
into compassion for the ways I learned
to be quiet, to go along, to play a part required by others
to keep myself safe from what I could not control.
Clarity cascading over what I now long to transform.

Freeing, yes,
but trauma and its implications
can’t be shed like a garment,
one swift motion over the head,
tossed in a rubbish bin and carted away
with other unwanted things.

It’s interwoven.
Intertwined.
Entangled with
parts of myself I might want to keep
if only I could tell the difference.

That’s the tricky part, though,
left wondering, sorting,
trying to determine
which parts stemmed from trauma
and which parts are really
me.

Casting about for answers,
wondering what will be left
or if I’ll unravel entirely,
until the effort, the noise of it,
finds me craving silence.

Not silence like a wall, a stone, a word unsaid.
Silence like a seed, a bloom, a leaf unfurling
to draw the sun’s rays.
Silence that shapes, expands, refines,
until I can name my true self for myself.
Out loud.

Be still. And know.
The wisdom says.
Good wisdom, stillness.

But some nights my skin is too jumpy
and knowing seems too far away.
I have to move, to walk,

to push past the door
and the neighbor’s floodlights
and the tallest trees

and take step after step up the dark path until I can see.
Her.
There.

Close, relatively speaking.
Her satellite beams shimmering through the night
as they have for millennia

while people long forgotten gazed at her light.
I marvel at the way she gazes back
from among stars or clouds.

Shifting, watching, breathing,
awareness expanding to the motion of
seas and orbits and how we’re each, somehow, both small and needed.

Some knowing arrives in stillness, without seeing.
And some seeing leads to greater knowing,
in the right light.

Eyes closed, yet
mind still prone to wander,
flounder, forget why I even started.

Not my intention to practice silence
the way rain falls from the sky.
Sometimes far too long between.

Sometimes far too much
at once to be absorbed, pooling,
ponding, where once was only dust.

Steady, is my intent.
Anchored, moored, awash,
continuous flow, leaving silt to settle.

Instead, dustbowl mind, swirling,
whirling while I search for calm,
realize, return, resettle.

Time passes, waiting,
suddenly aware, full presence,
taste of possibility,

a sliver more assurance that
there could be a God and if there is,
she is here, in me, in everything, and she is Love.

In what some consider
heretical musings,
dangerous thinking,
playing with fire
on slippery slopes,
asking for censure,

I find space for questions unwelcome
within either/or constructs
of other people’s god.

I find insights
previously obscured
by certainty that stifled
doubts along with creativity.

I find explorations
and longings
formerly restricted
to a certain collection of words.

I find companions
willing to clasp hands,
jump,
free fall,
enjoy the vastness,
the beauty,
the tenderness,
the wild wilderness
that beckons within,
that knows without seeing,
that new life is what we’ll find.

Wary of myself these days,
unsure if I’m sculpting feelings into words
or shaping words around my feelings.

Knowing letting go
creates a void that’s hard to name
in someone else’s terms.

Inhaling, try to conjure
semblance of truth
from fragments of what’s lost.

Sitting in the silence
that I once thought of as God
and finding

hesitation,
exhalation,
invitation

to new words
to save my own soul
from paths that aren’t for me.

Well, thank goodness we’re getting back to normal
as evidenced everywhere we go.

Regulations disregarded even before they’re even lifted
it all feels so normal now, doesn’t it?

As if three and a half million people have not died
of a pandemic made worse by refusal to act for mutual protection.

As if entire communities didn’t get sucked into a cesspool of conspiracy
or refuse to give a damn about their neighbors while fawning over unethical politicians.

As if children are not being killed in their own homes
by bombs and guns funded by world governments.

As if people are not dying, starving, fleeing devastation caused by destructive policy,
only to be caged on the borders of the countries that caused the most harm.

As if our tax dollars are not being used to kill and imprison and oppress
while the instruments of oppression are heralded as heroes.

As if rights of protest, votes, and safety aren’t being gleefully stripped from the vulnerable
at the manipulation of the rich and powerful.

As if people aren’t losing people, losing homes, losing peace, while being called lazy and selfish
for not sacrificing all on the altar of the economy for others’ convenience.

As if water and trees and the earth herself are not being ravaged
and her protectors are not cheated, brutalized for corporate gain.

As if Christians don’t worship corrupt, abusive men and follow them blindly
down a path that is nothing like the love of Christ.

As if there is nothing to grieve, nothing to morn, nothing to learn from,
no reason for pause or grace.

As if everything is fine, so totally fine, nothing to see here, everything is so, so normal
as long as you spend your money, demand service and subservience to your whims.

As if normal has not always been this tragic, trauma-filled ruin
that only those with privilege can pretend not to see.

As if those whose eyes are open don’t have the power to imagine and co-create
and bring about a better way than normal.