Tears . . .

It’s a week or so after my last blog post (Rebirth), and for anyone wondering . . . yes, I’m still here in the storm; and part of that tempest includes sorrow – with tears falling all around me.   So, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking – and writing – about tears.  What are these salty drops that seep from our eyes?  How do they somehow hold us in the storm?   Will they, at some point, carry us downstream to shelter and healing?

Although I don’t have any tangible, concrete answers to those questions, I do have words that showed up for me in the form of a poem.  And somehow, without me even realizing it, my soul tried to respond to what feels incomprehensible – that this flood, made up of millions of these tiny expressions of grief, holds the promise of something beautiful.  So I share this poem with you:

For Amanda

She didn’t have any paper . . . or a pen

so she wrote her grief with tears

a kind of translucent ink

that etched upon her skin in ways that told her story

of a love . . . not perfect

but cultivated in ways that grew her heart

in places she didn’t know existed

hidden in corners that now stood empty

and out of those lonely spaces . . . very slowly

her sad words wove themselves into a tapestry of colors

encompassing a depth she had not known

layers of life and love otherwise unseen

her story of heartache  . . . not fully written

would carry her softly into new landscapes

opening horizons that perhaps

she never expected to see. 

                                 Zoë  – April 2016

In the end, maybe our tears are simply words from our soul, creating a story that we don’t yet know the ending to.  For now, that feels like something to trust.  For now, that feels like a good enough reason to let myself write my story with tears.