Wave : becoming

I know not where or when the next wave will come from

Deep sadness rising up within my chest

That hold echoes of the past that hurt me

And stole so much

Allowing things in that I was

Powerless to put barriers up against

Now I fear the wave

As I fear that obliteration of self

An undoing and erasing

Of all I have worked so hard to build

Or had to steal surreptitiously

Denying I longed for more

When I am tossed this way and that

Breath disappears or strains to live

Lungs surround

Laboured heart

Struggling to find and beat its own rhythm

Inside my chest

Yet is this breathlessness

Reminding me of what has value

Even while buried under water

Of all that was denied me

On this path of becoming

In a world that never seemed to care too much

About my want

And so I ran

Always fearing that if I stood still

That wave would destroy me

So much that I was exhausted

And stranger to myself

For this I have learned

You cannot outrun trauma

But must summon up the courage to face it

Chest clamped tight I steel my heart

Against the very remembering

That will bring the flood

That will clear the landscape

For a new realisation

Sometimes the wave brings surrender

A dissolution of the truth of how hard I sought

To find unreal meaning

In what truth denied

Wreckage lay waste to dreams

That in being surrendered

Stole all hope

And yet was that death

Or all part of my becoming?

And now

If I seek peace and refuge in calm and silence

It this my hiding place

Or my place of birthing?