learning my way- mindfully stumbling

unlikely lessons
sucker punch you the hardest
when fear and hope sway

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

eyes like mirror memory kisses
silent lips, finger tips
and fights

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I know that moving forward, not past, is the idea
In moving I bend, stumble, fall and scrape my knees and palms and chin
for a long while
I cannot stand
I can barely breathe
Until I realize I AM standing
shuffling somehow somewhere
anywhere but where the blood marks lay
and there is fog like a blanket
fog like surround sound
fog like goggles and gloves and heavy, wet galoshes
but
I. Am. moving

1,461
The number of days that make up four years
Since we breathe
about 23,040 times a day,
that means I've survived
over 33 million inhalations
ingesting the energy he left behind

when I close my eyes
when I slow my breathing
when I repeat my mantras:       may I be brave
may I be kind, may I be well, may I be happy:
I notice my limbs
languid
lacking a body to embrace
and so
I breathe again
and once more

building, failing, learning, growing
attempting so many -ings

sometimes, though the story
my fingers tell me about
how much they miss touching
is more subtle
than the other sound my heart can hear:
the harrowing screams
echo-clanging between my ribs
sealing hope into a vibration chamber
because I
am far more afraid
than I let myself admit.

They are abandonment screams...
screams that scratch out each story
of the lies, manipulation, misplaced trust, and pain
that came before him.

They are the abandonment screams...
screams that, creaking, etch the bleeding story
of how the One that Would Never Leave
was dragged from this world
to melt into
the hospice bed
leaving beside me a cool, heavy husk
leaving beneath me scorched grounds
leaving inside me a viscous hallowed essence
leaving around me only echo sounds

I want to be ready for the growing time:
gently, with awe and reverence, I will remove the husk
to find the seeds.
Barefoot, I will bend to the earth and dig
with roughened hands and ripped, jagged fingernails: for as a forest fire licks layers of life
into its grounds, perpetuating the nitrogen cycle,
the phoenix fire that I've been blistering in
has, perhaps, laid a new foundation

I will hold his energy inside me
the bits I breathed in since he left
and the bits he gave me while he was alive
And with them as my arc reactor
I will attempt
to allow the hallowed essence to fold and whisper the viscous bits
into something softer
I will breathe deep into my diaphragm
so that, instead of only echo sounds
I can open my mouth

to
sing.