Poem: Meaning

i read somewhere,

that your purpose is

to give your life meaning

Clever, i’d thought then

now, never a truer thing I saw

It’s all experience, hands-on

full throttle even when time

moves at a snail’s pace

It’s a real thing, to have died

and still, be breathing, limbs moving

It was/is my experience living on this edge

To know what it means

to have a freezer-burned soul

The thaw promised growth and healing

What’s good for me was not for the polar bear

Scattered around my body

are holes i dug with my

bare fingers

Like from the earth my mother came

ivy and moss flank the trellis of my ribs

to hold myself to me,

Perhaps, i realize, not so i did not fall apart

but to contain the new thing I become

each time i change

into the thing i’m supposed to be

i know what it means to

sit quietly at dawn and to

let the dew bathe me

i know what it means to

let my fears consume me

i know what a fickle unicorn is hope

and i have learned to cherish it

i know what it feels to

hurt out of shame

and i learned to pray for

those i’ve wronged

i know what it means to love

and be loved

i know what it means to inflict pain

i’d know my handprint on my own cheek

i know that crying means healing

the hardest thing it to trust

to love, to forgive and to have patience

even with my own person

Meaning of anything can only

begin to matter if i/you/we are there

to hold it in my/your/our hands

and taste it on my/your/ our tongues

and make it my/your/our own

Because in the end, life simply means living

On our terms

To look at our scars with pride

and marvel at the strength we gained

To see a mountain a know we can climb it

Because we’ve been there before

We know what it means:

pain, hurt, trapped, joy, freedom

We are still learning

what it means to overcome.

© Devina Singh, 2018

Photo credit: Pixabay