Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse # 141“The past is not a package one can lay away.” ~ Emily Dickinson
I once wore my disappointments of the past like heavy armor
prepared to battle all that the future could hold or take away.
Keeping every harsh word and silent goodbye like folded
letters in envelopes I could never send.
I grew wide fields of wheat feeding an obese denial that no
tractor’s blade could ever plow,
and my heart built colossal walls so magnificent that no man
could ever climb nor could my own eyes see beyond.
You see memory is a relentless child that has heard news of
the carnival and will never forget when it does not come to town,
and those disappointments seem to grow bigger with time like
a child’s hopes or a woman’s hips,
but even harder to ever lose!
So in the lessons that life’s hurts and losses seem to bring,
I learned to carry grief tightly like an over protective
mother afraid of running children and the oncoming cars.
Looking back now, I see I had spent all my strength fiercely
holding a certain sorrow;
afraid of losing all I hold dear.
Holding the cold hard knowledge of what it is to truly lose.
For life becomes a bitter struggle when the fear of what we
could lose outweighs
the abundant joy of holding what we truly have.
