What is unwanted still serves.
—Sam Aureli, “Dandelions”
I was just sitting on the edge of the porch,
but I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe,
I was sobbing and scared and hurting and
I couldn’t fucking breathe; panic surged in me,
my brain screamed red, and I tried to breathe—
why couldn’t I breathe?—as my chest squeezed
and sobs quaked and shook and stole me,
and I couldn’t feel my heart. Wait. I couldn’t feel
my heart? A star-bright awareness sang in me then
like a one-note song I could follow home through
any darkness or density. Not that the terror disappeared,
but in attuning myself to my heart, my physical heart
opened enough to hold the terror. I sat on the edge
of the porch. Just sat. And was breathed.
Dear Rosemerry, May you continue to attune yourself to your heart so that you may be breathed. Thank you for showing us what love can do, and allowing us to breathe with you.
Thank you dear poet. Thank you for breathing with me. xoxo
Bless you dear Rosemerry, I love the thought that we can be breathed.
Oh, it is such a wildly different way of inhabiting the body!!
Gorgeous poem, Rosemerry! I feel all of this in your poem.
Thank you dear Joanne … all the feels in this one!
Wow – very raw and different from your usual poetry – hope you are well and breathing….P
thank you dear Pilar, I am well and breathing! It is a memory of about four years ago, but I was never able to write about it and then got to thinking of how the most difficult experiences serve us …
Being breathed – I love that. You took me right into that grief – then offered that profound gift at the end – that one can live through such moments somehow.
oh friend, we can live, or as the poem suggests, we can be lived … that was the great teaching of that night, the being in service to life
a scary, transforming experience
oh yes. both. Scary. And transforming. The gift we could never ask for.