Unfurling

This poem came about a wondering - what is it like, those places in us that bend toward the light, uncurling from their tightly coiled buds?

We can feel so much shame or anxiety about the places in us that 'have not yet known love,' as Francis Weller beautifully said it. These places often fold in. They can collapse. They can weep as they grow or as they show themselves up on the surface of our lives.

The very act of healing means that we expose the tender, naked, vulnerable parts of ourselves to new light, to life, and to new experiences that can leave us shaking, weeping, or trembling. This can bring up so much vulnerability that we turn on ourselves, blaming or shaming ourselves for the very act of carrying wounds.

This poem explores one of my healing places - the places in me that learned to bend when I wanted to stand upright, and that are unfurling, their voices rising. I cheer them on like a soccer mom on the sidelines,"Yes, you can do it! Keep going! Keep moving forward!"

Unfurling

You wait on hold to ask about the charge,
a two week trial you forgot to cancel. When
you ask for a refund, you shake inside. You
hear yourself plead, your tears breaching
the dam of your strength.

You don't cry when you say no to the woman
with the sign at the stoplight or to the men
idling in their pick up trucks, asking to trim
your trees. But when you say no, stop, you tremble.

Sometimes you hate your collapse, a deflated
balloon when you want to be strong. But you
wonder about the furrows that shaped you.
What riverbeds etched into your body? If
it's hard to stand upright, perhaps something
made you bend.

Each time you say no your fascia reweaves
her fibers. You cry in this plaiting. Perhaps
these tears aren't weakness but the strength
of rising, the water that fills you as you learn
to float. Perhaps tears don't reveal shame
but the hard labor of carving new paths.
Perhaps we all tremble as we rebuild
what learned how to curl in, what kneels
before us as we unfurl the sails of our
yearning and rise to stand tall.

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With a grateful heart, Karly