I fear my hardening heart

The sun peers through my window,

and gently shakes me awake. 

Another day of the same–

seeking always and only the joy 

and the beauty and the goodness,

or else I’d go crazy right?

 

Constantly careening towards grief, I 

try to deny my vincibility,

framing my agony in the disparaging language 

of fragility, 

frailty. 

And forbidding such raw expression of hurt from taking hold. 

 

Because I am more powerful than mourning,

too strong to admit such sorrow, 

too convinced of the evils of the world to surrender myself to my sadness

    (for mine seems so trivial in the cosmic scheme of things).

 

But as I recklessly numb myself

to the state of my soul, I am 

    brick 

    by 

    brick

building up an impenetrable barrier.

 

How long can I maintain this ruse?

Seemingly self-sufficient but silently screeching, 

shaming myself for my rigidity, 

the denial of my own humanity. 

As if I were somehow better, 

because I blocked out pain,

somehow I beat being human by 

shutting out all recollection of the one who bore me, 

turning on my family, 

on my mother, 

on myself.

 

Forcing myself into forgetfulness 

    another brick to the barricade.

I do not want to be sad, I wish to feel no pain 

and know less hurt,

I don’t want to lug around this grief anymore.

 

    A stone the size of my resentment I layer onto the wall. 

 

Yet this searing, aching, gaping hole persists,

insists that I am not God. 

But I resist such evidence of my mortality

and enlisting all my energies, I flee and hide and ride along, 

saying, as others pry,

I’m fine.

 

    A pile of untruths is cemented onto my 

increasingly unshakeable fortress

of which I am God.

 

But there are whispers of resistance, 

my lingering humanity attempts to dislodge 

    the boulders of my impassivity that 

tower around me.

 

Grace in the form of a grieving friend prods me 

towards my pain. 

She looks me in the eye and asks, 

“honey,

where does it hurt?”

Emboldened by her bravery 

I embark upon a journey.

    As light breaks through my guilt laced walls

and ushers in the truth,

I start to share my self-damning thoughts.

Tears streak down my face,

    eroding my strong barricade and giving hope a chance.

 

As tears are now in both our eyes my sorrow feels so seen

as our marred hearts still grieve 

the ache 

that is our missing parents.

 

She helps me see that my power 

rests in my mourning, 

a mighty companion of memory,

and my strength surely lets my sorrow sidle in. 

The evils of the world are daunting but 

this need not dismiss my sadness–

for my suffering is 

a part 

of my story 

and deserves to see the sun.

 

I am not defined by my grief but 

it ebbs 

and flows 

with time,

    as I work to tear down these walls I’ve built,

between my humanness and me.