back/here

On being back/here:

Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it feels like being hugged. Sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it all feels fuzzy, like I’m walking around this world in a bubble only I can see and inside of which there is a Moses and there are children dying and there are momentous-seeming movements.

But mostly it feels like I’m holding secrets on my heart in the form of names, in the shape of giggles, in the outline of breaths staying, breaths going.

And mostly it feels like there are stories pounding at my chest bones, like all that I’ve been witness to has piled up at the edges of my eyelids, like I don’t have the words to speak all the memories to the wondering and like I don’t have the air to be graceful to all the responses.

Because fully it feels like I miss it, like I wake up each day choosing to embrace what is before me in courage and in peacefulness, like two months or maybe five years of mind-silent beauty, of challenging muddling, of pain, of soul-deep joy, of sureness of heart has piled and pushed me toward a time of quiet and of remembering and of stillness.

On being back/here.