All that remains 05/06/2012
 
When your two constant companions
are fatigue and pain
you see the truth
about what remains,
a clarity of fortitude
and of purpose
of what in life matters.

Breath,food, rest
and the comforting words
of someone who cares
and who tries to
understand,
that everything else
has burned away,
a pyre filled with the sticks
and fragments of your previous
life,
now cold ashes
and memory.

A child's laughter
makes you smile
through the pain
like a few lines of poetry
can stamp words of hope
upon your weary soul.

What remains is this:
fortitude,
this day,
this moment
a compass with its needle
only pointing one direction,
towards hope
that someday the pain
will be the memory,
tattooed upon your heart.




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Sometimes the betrayal of a loved one
hurts more than the betrayal
of body,
of a bladder filled
with sharp and unending pain.

When all you want
is understanding,
comfort,
love
But instead you are given
feelings of hopelessness,
separation
or that somehow the pain
is your fault.

Sometimes the pain
of understanding,
that some people
are not as strong as you,
cuts to the bone
down to the marrow of your
very being.

But sometimes the separation
from those who
bring you further
down
down,
into the whirlwind of despair,
is the thing that will help you
on your road to recovery.

Sometimes that road
has to be traveled alone,
but you will be
just fine.
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Unending circles speak
and tell the story
of me.
Rings of years,
countable like an old oak tree:
years of famine
years of abundance.
And all the years in between,
countable yet forgotten,
the growth was both the journey
and the purpose.

Scarring and pain
as evident as the hatch marks from an ax:
this cut is for IC
and that cut is where
the limbs of your strong life
began to break away,
falling to the earth
to feed your roots
with their memories soaked with decay
and the rain of your tears.

The mourning doves have nested
Here
and there
and sung their songs of lost love
and of melancholy
and of nights filled with pain.
Mourning doves mate for life,
calling out stories of shared
days and nights,
animal totems of a life now lived with
pain.

Count the rings of my trunk!
I have lived through it all,
both sadness and pain.
Nourished and protected by the other trees
in the forest of friends,
I thrive,
I grow,
My roots reach out
gripping the earth,
grateful to still be standing here.
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Slipped into the world
born anew
both filled
and washed in blood,
my cries filled the morning
light
flooding into the white hospital room.

I am here!
My voice,
an early premonition to my mother:
"This one will be loud,"
as she pressed me to her breast
and held me to herself.

Born without twin companion
I grew used
to learning,
from people older
than myself.
And of how a ladybug's
red beauty in the summer
quickly turns to dust
by fall.

Alone with my thoughts
and with the beautiful
heroines unfolding
out of fairy tales
read regardless of the weather
outside my bedroom window.

Oh, Pippi Longstocking
to have your russet braids
and a life filled with adventure!
But no I would rather be the Snow Queen
and have friends of forest animals
and of little devoting men.

Tales that always ended
with happiness
and forest friends
wrapping a garland of ivy
through your hair
And sunlight filled
all of their days.

I fear I either
read the wrong
fairy tales,
or I read them wrong.
For born out of my hips,
of my pelvis
and of my womanhood:
A twin.

In place of hues of golden,
a grey subdued mirror
image of the self
I thought I was,
or was becoming.
In her place a twin
born from pain,
and of longing for the former self,
to arise out of the ashes
which fill my mouth
along with the terror
of the pain
and of the loss of myself.

The twin still walks beside
and behind me.
I feel her fingers
in my hair
and her hands
reaching,
grabbing my own
when the phantom pains
return.

Our umbilical cord is filled
with memory's blood,
sleepless nights
and the Pain
which is granted
a name worthy of
capitalization.

I am the twin
and she is me,
together
one and the same
a duo,
a duet of pain
and remembrance.

We now walk the earth
together,
searching out the shadow lands
of our pain secrets
and the gifts
that only a twin soul
understands.



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