Say nothing

Please say nothing. Let me breathe in this pain. Let the pain in, let it wash over, leave it to overflow. At the end of this pain there is nothingness. The way through contains every pain ever felt, and to feel pain is to be still alive. So let me breathe it in. I want to hold this pain in stillness. This neverending grief that won’t be smaller, nor more distant, like some far away dream. I’m not ready to breathe out any of this pain just yet, so say nothing. When life grows around this pain, this grief, this hole, it will define its shape. But not today. Today the pain just is. And if you say nothing, only for now, while I hold my breath and the pain burns in my throat, for this eternal right now never ending breath, I know you can see it too, and you will say nothing.

I took my fear

I took my fear And it was slippery, sticky. It filtrated through my every crack. It was unstoppable like lava flowing from the open crater of a volcano. It darkened the sun and took hold of the stars. It was a deep dive into the sea, your bones shivering at the realisation that the water above is too heavy, your lungs suddenly burning with the uncertainty of the next breath. I took my fear. I breathed it all in and I allowed it to paralise every muscle of my body. In that very moment, my world stopped spinning and I held my breath awhile. I took my fear and I smoothed out an edge of it. I was still free falling, dizzy with the sudden confirmation of its enormity. But I saw it. And like a mother opens her arms to hold a crying infant, I took my fear in. My body was exhausted from carrying this fear about life, my legs each weighing a ton and my shoulders dropping heavy under its burden. I took my fear, I looked at it. I sat next to it and let it crawl onto my lap. Like a piece of clay, I twisted it and tweaked it. No one dies of a feeling, I told myself. No matter how overwhelming this fear feels, my body holds enough space to breathe it in and breathe it out. The cry is not the hurt, it’s the expression of the hurt. And so… In the middle of the night, I lit a candle. In the middle of the fall, I took a breath. When the skies darkened with the most ominous clouds, I reminded myself that the Sun, the Moon and the stars were still there, above it. This fear was big, it couldn’t be ignored. So I took it. I moulded it and I poked holes in it to let other feelings in too. This too shall pass. There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.