Stopping Time

Grief, weighing heavy on my chest, tightening my throat, I hear you.

I feel your grip. I know you’re there.

I read somewhere that grief is an internal process and mourning is when we externalize it, and share it with others. I wonder if I could share it.

I wonder if I do, will the grip loosen?

Will my vocalization open my throat, expand my chest,

leaving me lighter, more alive, more expansive?

I don’t know.

All I know is

I’m feeling scarcity, and that’s never good.

I’m feeling helplessness and isolation, though I’m not alone.

I’m lonely for them, yes, but also for something intangible.

Could it be that I can mourn, and the void won’t be so vast?

Is connection even possible

when I am so often locked behind the vine-laden walls of my grief?

I crave expression, but fail to know what form it can take to satiate this hunger, this desperation to feel whole again.

I’m a multitude of contradictions.

Anchored both to the dead AND the Living.

Staying in the present moments, yet drifting in and out of the mist of memory,

Laughing and crying, striving and allowing, meditating and smoking e cigarettes.

I set sail as bravely as I can, because I am still of this earth, and I am needed.

I am darkness and light.

I can fill up the room with joy, or suck the wind from your sails.

I am storms and sea, yet also secluded deep in the woods of my mind’s entanglements.

I love the expansiveness of night, yet am compelled toward the daylight of my family.

I never want to stop connecting, yet crave escape… to solitude.

And for many years I have wanted to solve the mystery of how to Stop Time.

So I can catch my breath, and maybe,

I can Heal.