Mar 2012
A polished rock that said "live"
slipped through my fingers
and shattered on the ground in front of me,
like accidentally ignoring good advice,
like growing up and realizing
that to live
is not a right,
but a privalege --
and opportunity
to rip away the swingset chains
that have tied us to our pasts
with knots
that take 7 billion prayers
to untie,
to open up
and set us free --
free to skip stones on clean water,
to superglue broken rocks together
like puzzle pieces
encouraging Life.
But when it's put back together
the cracks are still visible,
with gaps
from pieces of ourselves we've left behind.
Don't give up on that rock,
or else you're no better
than the ground that broke it,
that broke you.
A rock your strength
will never stop telling you,
"Live."
slipped through my fingers
and shattered on the ground in front of me,
like accidentally ignoring good advice,
like growing up and realizing
that to live
is not a right,
but a privalege --
and opportunity
to rip away the swingset chains
that have tied us to our pasts
with knots
that take 7 billion prayers
to untie,
to open up
and set us free --
free to skip stones on clean water,
to superglue broken rocks together
like puzzle pieces
encouraging Life.
But when it's put back together
the cracks are still visible,
with gaps
from pieces of ourselves we've left behind.
Don't give up on that rock,
or else you're no better
than the ground that broke it,
that broke you.
A rock your strength
will never stop telling you,
"Live."
Upon joining a support group for something that happened to me, something that destabilized me, a therapist gave me a rock. On that rock was the word "Live." The next day I accidentally dropped it and it broke. The symbolism in that, I realize, is kind of terrifying if you're a fan of real-life metaphors (oxymoron). Anyway, I wrote this poem about that, in a sense.
