A poem about healing through sharing grief
I will tell you what I fear. What hurts. I will tell you what I value above all. I will tell you my broken edged stories of regret. These words are a gift.
I will give them to you so that you know I do not hold them on my own.
That the act of giving doesn’t make them more or less real, doesn’t give them more power, doesn’t change me or how you see me.
The holding of words, the giving of words, doesn’t make me weak or strong. They are just words, as light as breath. The air they consume does not give them worth or weight; does not empower them with control over the speaker or the listener.
The words I share, I choose to share with you, are not a binding thing. They are not a promise or an invoice. They do not mean I owe or I own.
They are words, the names of things I feel and have felt. Ideas given shape. Memories given texture – breath to give bodies to filaments of impulse, colors stored away, bent with time and the feelings of holding them.
My mouth that speaks these words I give to you, is just a mouth. It has formed so many words, shown the shape of joy and disapproval, tasted and tested. Although my words may wound, they are not a weapon, my mouth not a scabbard, a sheath to cover the pain my words may inflict.
But know that the pain is yours alone, that words are words. If they stir up grief, it is because you let it settle somewhere, and the words have awoken it.
My hope is that the words I use to describe my grief, the grief I own, they might see a similar thing, they may be drawn like to like, to the grief asleep inside you. The words I share may awake your grief, but your grief has words of its own.
you may share those words with me.