a reckoning

the magnitude of me.

I have come to know myself in all of these languages — grief, longing, agony, love. I’ve been a witness to how my bones have deformed in their nature — and how, too, my marrow has strengthened because of them. It is also that I have reckoned with how these languages have weathered my soul. How, time and time again, they’ve come and changed the texture of my yearning. I yearn now to a deeper degree. At times, with more weariness — but also, with more devotion.

My longing now is to re-arrive at the heart of who I am as many times as I have drifted away. I’ve attended many burials and resurrections of myself. I am in between the versions of who I was and the woman that is still unfolding, and it is painful and terrifying and exhausting. But also, liberating — all under the same wind.

I am at the feet of my own mercy, here. I must be gentle in the spaces. In the pause. In the limbo. As a preservation of my yearning, and to not lose my ability to hope for or insist upon what is necessary for my becoming and my sustaining. I am only now arriving at the belief that I worthy of requiring that which I know is safe and nourishing and healing to my soul. But it has come with many other revelations, such as the fact that I am a delicate being trying to navigate the act of safeguarding and maintaining what makes me tender in these rough spaces.

I am tender to the point of being bruised — frequently, easily, and without rush. The wounding is often swift, but I’ve come to notice that the formation of the bruise is a slow churn. It takes its time to settle in, and then becomes an unrelenting storm. The weight of this world is unyielding in ways I have yet to come to terms with, but my duty is to the tending and sustenance of my softness.

At most, these days, I’ve had nothing but a sigh, a scream, or curse words tangled in prayer spilling from my tongue. I am weary of bearing my pain, but know that this is the only way out — to travel through the ache and hold space for it. I must take up the wound. There is no way around it. Only through. For I know of the riot it can cause within my skin. The wound can be unforgiving, but my heart sees me through the bruise. This breaking, this unfolding, this sifting — it is all for the sake of coming to know myself in full measure.

In all of these languages, I am mine. Mine to nurture. Mine to witness. Mine to bear. I must tend to the magnitude of me.