to tell you here its because i can't tell you here, but also because i can't tell (i just don't know), i can't say it, because there is no way to say any of this (i feel just awful about this whole thing). and the words are all ruined anyway.
but i thought it would be fair to let you know i won't be installed this Sunday. I'm taking a leave from my church family to attend to my troubles.
because
there are words we have begun using about ourselves that are really scary words and now they have begun to mean new things (which are not less scary, just less fearful):
violence doesn't mean hatred like it used to; now it means i have to notice there are safer ways of being (with or by) myself.
abuse doesn't mean hatred like it used to; now it means crossing boundaries made of barbed wire: both of us got hurt and we have to stop that right away.
afraid doesn't mean weak anymore; now it means i am listening to my heart.
a threat doesn't sound so ridiculous anymore; now it is a signal for me to begin letting go of the confusion hanging over my head. i am giving up the seeing-stars after-shock, wrapped like a gauze bandage over my forehead, like a blindfold, which was only supposed to be some kind of cure for a broken-home dizzy spell.
coping doesn't mean we're able to do this; it means we were merely surviving because hurting is all we could manage.
move doesn't mean new place;
leave doesn't mean abandon, that is just what we were always most afraid of.
so i wrote this little poem about all these words that i am having so much trouble with.
this word
A scrap of muslin tied to my tongue with one running thread of hope
hiding underneath and then showing
against the worn down knit of who I was
jumping over the muscle and skin,
loose, rising
with each wily hurdle:
over the barren landscape, its discrepant hanging snags, and wild fray.
Not only in my mouth, but a false loose covering
the down on my skin
catching against and weaving, over, under,
each inch of the patchwork cover:
grasses tangled with wild flowers in a wind
a comb caught in curls,
nerves straining when my heart pulls away
--your fingers in the weave of my sweater--
and tighten down, the desire--mending hopes
as sinews strain and capillaries flushed with blood: writhing
twine twisting in and around itself for strength
just before the gravity of the moment snaps the twisted cord and splinters hollow bone.
I am free but I am broken:
all this time
I spent
knotting the bedsheets together, stringing sentences like a rope.
I strung together the pieces of the fairytale, hoping the language would
make my escape for me,
only to find I held them so tightly, the words refused.
Down and out with nothing but time
to heal.
The needle and thread slide in and out now between moments,
Wrapping me in pricks and drawing blood: this resurfacing and strengthening.
Shaking and confident and smooth to the touch
I try to hold on
Still.
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