Let your eyes adjust
The colors of mysteries
Judge me not - they come
About the Creator
Jonathan Lawrence
Haiku writer.
When life gives you ink, make penstrokes.
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Foot Bindings
I asked my grandmother how she knew she'd fallen in love. I am not sure I ever did love him, she said. This was before I met my husband. I was naive, a naked spring, a raw nerve of a thing. That cannot ever be me, I knew. Sadness swept in gently like a Moscow thaw. It is no simple thing, looking into a woman's vast soul and seeing its foot bindings. Now, in Italy divorced with my skin singed off, when I say I don't love him mean: I have succeeded at feeling nothing most days and it mostly works. Do you want the comfort of Nothing? Do you want Nothing, too? Be warned: you'll never be free, even when you are nothing. Here is what doesn't work: Accepting the stages of grief. Talking about it. Sitting with the feeling. Missing him—no, the person you were when you believed in death do us part. Writing poetry. That, too. When I say I don't love him I mean: I feel capsized in an endless, starved tide. What sometimes works: selective memory. You must forget ripe tomatoes and his beard and feeling perfectly sheltered in a big blue world. Forget coffee in bed, laughter watching TV, blowing out the candles on the birthday cake and the quiet all-encompassing knowledge that you are chosen. Remember only how love turned to a banal everyday survival act, a trapeze act unsure whether he will catch you, how the warmth stagnated and became sour, remember the foot bindings and remember the resentment boiling in your veins as you stick it out for the kids. Six-hour Netflix binges help, too. A man's fingers tracing your spine. Frozen pizza at 2 a.m. Random trips to the museum just to stand near things that last a while. The realization that crying won’t change anything. Seeing that life is just a dream, and refusing to participate in your own suffering. Bite your fist. Walk on eggshells around joy. When I say I don't love him, I mean he didn’t break my heart, he just stopped touching it and it forgot how to beat right.
By Ella Bogdanova2 days ago in Poets
Instructions For Letting Go
Begin by choosing a quiet place. Not silence..... just somewhere the noise doesn’t argue back. Sit down. Let your hands rest where they fall. 2. Gather what you’ve been holding. The unfinished conversations. The words you rehearsed but never said. Do not organize them. Mess is part of the process. 3. Breathe without waiting for a reply. Inhale as if no one is watching. Exhale as if you don’t owe anyone an explanation. Repeat until your chest softens. 4. Stop editing the past. Do not rename neglect as distance. Do not call absence mystery. Clarity may hurt, but it hurts less than pretending. 5. Release quietly. No speeches. No witnesses. Just a small, private decision to stop reaching for what no longer reaches back. 6. When the feeling returns.... and it will..... do not panic. Feelings revisit to be acknowledged, not obeyed. 7. Finally, turn toward yourself. Eat something warm. Sleep without checking your phone. Notice how your name still sounds whole when spoken gently. If done correctly, letting go will not feel like freedom at first. It will feel like honesty. That is how you will know you are beginning.
By Muhammad Haroon khan4 days ago in Poets
from death into life
Young Aldin of Wiloh had never contemplated death. It was almost strange — so many around him had the tendency to obsess over it, to clamor and claw almost desperately at their own perceptions of the end to know death as much as they could: when it would come, why it would come, where it would take them when it did.
By angela hepwortha day ago in Fiction
Comments (2)
You're so great at haikus! :D Keep it up!
Very nice Haiku.