I don’t know what gave you the courage to feed your fear so completely, to let that single moment turn eternity-permanent. Maybe it was the demons who had caught you with claws and with shudder, forced your head under a spell that you couldn’t resist. Maybe the despair said a curse that you couldn’t unhear, and you believed it, those lies of never and better off that your friends never would have believed about you, if only you knew. Maybe you didn’t really mean to— you were thinking about it, but you didn’t think that you’d do it, until your finger slipped too close to an accident you couldn’t undo. Or maybe it was just a stupid mistake, like we all make, only bigger— like the fib we find ourselves defending, the one drink too many, the best friend unfriended, the baby in the belly at too young an age— you did something stupid in the heat of a moment, but unlike us lucky ones, you picked the one scar that the years don’t let go of. I don’t know why you left me. I can’t even fathom what you must have been thinking, but I can choose what I’m going to go on thinking about you, and it’s not this. I refuse to frame your face with a casket; I will not define you by your dumbest regret. I know who you were, friend, despite what you did once, and that’s what I hold onto in the aching wide space that you left. You’re laughter that crackled bright songs past my static, kindness incarnate, gentlest friend, and with you, I could stare down an enemy army cause you’d have my back no matter what attack fractured in. That bullet? It happened to you, yes, but it’s not who you were. I know your name, and in my memory, you’re still shining the same.
Tag: survivor
Resistance is a hard-won art
Last night, I dreamed that I was with a group of people who were practicing saying the word no together. That’s all: we just repeated the word, slowly at first and then with confidence, until the sound of no was normal and not so scary anymore.
I knew in my dream that we didn’t have to practice the word yes because that word would come to us easily, automatically. Agreement and acceptance, going along with the crowd, being liked, being compliant—no one needs to practice easy street. We would find a yes for every fitting situation without even having to search for it, without even having to think.
But some moments would demand a much braver no, and no demands practice, intentionality, resolve. You cannot say no in front of a smoking gun without strength of character to carry you through. We practiced because we knew the moment would come, and when it came, we would have already made the decision to choose conviction over comfort, always. We wouldn’t have to bear the weight of a dizzying decision in the heat of the emotional moment, because we had done the hard work of choosing well in advance: just no. No. No. No.
this is my never-ending no
to all coercion and control
Out of Control
Be careful, little heart, what you learn,
because once you know
that your soul is your own,
you can never forget—
and they will hate you for that.
Backyard Apricots 