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
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