Surrender

If I give in fully

To the true depth of my heart ache

Will I ever rise again

Or find legs to stand?

Dont you know that buried down so deep in me

Are memories of which we never speak

But exist here anywhere

Most especially when we surrender to silence

I know that this pain and hurting

Is not the whole of me

And yet it has been the constant companion

In so many experiences of my life

To be left alot

Even on the side of the road in foreign towns

Without a cent to my name

Abandoned on the brink of the deepest lost

Sent to fly far from every thing I knew

When only so tender and young

With no protective coat

And there to know longings and buried suffering

Inarticulate

That drove me to more pain

But now it is all with me

And indeed I need to listen

To these spaces in me that lie so deep

Where old suffering is contained

And this pain and these tears need to be surrendered to

And opened

And allowed to wash me clean

I can no longer live in the lie of a system and culture that tells me

It is illness or insanity to know my pain at depth

To explore it and mine it

To dive into its inky depths

To understand it was never the whole of me

Just a symptom of what happened in a family and culture

That left me without any hands

And for a long time

With no legs to stand