You made me laugh,
And I forgot all the tears.
You helped me up,
And I forgot the times
You let me down.
You were hatred,
Just as surely as
You were love.
You were everything right
And everything wrong—
Humility and
Defiance,
Cruelty
And kindness,
Approval and
Contempt.
You were everything
And nothing.
I had to let you go,
And it freed me.
Still, I’m sad,
For I know
Who you might have been.
I know you so well…
But you do not know me. – Kyrian Lyndon
from Remnants of Severed Chains
The robin in your tender heart
Hungers for the red berry
That titillates your tongue.
She carols as the snow falls—
And not with the chorus of the dawn
In radiant spring.
What might have been?
Your voice silenced,
The spirit of you
Destroyed,
I see glimpses of your fire
From the light that has vanished
From your eyes.
Your wings soar,
Only not to follow
Your heart.
And your heart is that of
A child,
Deeply vulnerable,
Precious,
So sensitive,
And sweet.
You inspire me
To change my perspective
With your unique vision
Of the world.
You shine with your brilliance,
And you don’t know.
Your bursts of laughter
Make me smile.
As always, you are the light
In my darkness;
Your spirit is the fire I feel
In the sun’s warmth.
You were the dawn of my awakening,
And the splendor of my dreams.
And I have cried
For your heart
More than I have ever cried
For my own.
I am torn apart by
The intensity of your pain.
It is profound sadness
I feel,
When I think I’ve reached you
And then hit another wall…
Hard.
I fear losing you forever
To your grief,
As I grieve, too,
For the subtleties
And cues
You don’t understand.
Avoiding the eyes of others …
Your intense frustration
In trying to get it right,
And thinking you have it all wrong.
You have it right,
So right—
Always did,
Always will.
I only wish you could know
The joy
Of being free.
The tentative smiles,
The looks of uncertainty,
Prompt me to tell you,
You got this.
You’ll be fine.
Whatever the passion,
Let it burn.
It will save you.
Retrieve every shattered fragment
Of your soul.
Accept it,
Embrace it,
Bless it with your peace.
Give it mighty and glorious wings,
And let it fly where it leads
Without fear,
Into the twilight of an infinite sky.
Be happy,
Shine,
Glow.
Love,
Dance,
Sing.
Celebrate yourself
And don’t stop singing
Your life’s song.
The song is your vision,
Your passion;
It belongs to you.
Without it,
You wither and die.
Don’t you, for one moment,
Let anyone crush your beautiful spirit.
Know, too, those who have crushed you
Have been crushed.
Those who pain you have been pained.
Still, you can rise again,
Become completely alive again
And shine on,
Just as you did before all the hurt began.
You are not defective,
My dear one,
Not a burden,
Nor do you struggle alone.
I’m here with you.
I will always be with you.
You are
In every way
Beautiful.
Though you don’t see that,
And you never have.
I just love you.
Reality to me is the dusk,
Prevalence in the shadows.
It is cloaking,
Grasping,
Discerning
In a world of darkness.
It is torment.
It is restraint.
The beauty of the peaceful lull amid the
Trees just before sunrise
Lies in contrast with the hazy tumult of my
Self-inflicted tomb.
I am in awe of every vision.
I bask in the passion of every caress.
Every bit of air I breathe is a godsend.
I could listen with the stillness of the ocean
Before daybreak
To the waves amid a blue-violet sky.
I could dance with flair and gaiety to the music
With a glow that illuminates me.
There is no one else I’d rather be—
Unless it were to love you.
You are all that I crave.
Sometimes we lose someone who may not have been that close to us, yet we think they should have been. Those ties were supposed to bind but didn’t. Instead, they turned out to be so weak, they broke a little more at every difference of opinion, every instance where we stood up for ourselves, every time people looked at us and didn’t see themselves. Maybe it was some argument, someone else’s stupid meddling, someone’s denial. Maybe it was all because of lies and fragile egos, people trying to turn one against the other, smear campaigns, and the rush to judgment.
So there was a death that day, but we didn’t lose the person then. We lost this person long ago, and it broke our hearts a thousand times already. Is this someone we really had or truly knew? We lost that chance. We lost to the dysfunction. Not even the obligatory love and commitment could save it. It got to a point where suiting up and showing up simply hurt too much.
Somewhere along the line, we’ll see some display of genuine family love and laughter, and we want that, all the while wondering why we didn’t get it, and so we grieve that.
Yes, we mourn what we couldn’t have, and death is not only a reminder; it is the finale. We say goodbye with so much weight, with a burden too hard to hold. There are holes that will never be filled, stories that will never be heard, never told, and scars that won’t heal. There is grief in isolation. It’s more than sorrow. It’s devastation.
You miss what you wanted that to be, but you don’t want it back, not any of it.
Quite honestly, it becomes clearer to me every day, how complicated grief is with all of its added dimensions.
People celebrate certain individuals and shun others. Maybe the shunning was because of addiction or disease, or maybe it was the wrong sexual preference. I don’t know. But one mother and child may have the world to grieve with her, and so she should. In the other case, a parent and child can go through hell with no one comprehending the loss or caring. Others simply deemed the person mourned unworthy for something beyond his or her control, while others are worthy regardless of their choices, because their choices were ones people could relate to, things people didn’t fear for lack of understanding.
I think about these things… and all of life’s unfairness. Life is not fair, nor will it ever be. Accepting that helps but doesn’t heal. There are moments we can’t handle anymore, not just then, no, and we shut down. We have to. And we ask, what’s wrong with me that I feel this way? What’s wrong with me that I see these things others don’t see, that I can’t accept what they accept? What’s wrong with me that I couldn’t fix it, couldn’t explain it, couldn’t stop it, didn’t protest, cried alone? You say, what if they had heard my heart? What if we had resolved all of this? But they wouldn’t have heard, and it wouldn’t have gotten resolved, and we know it. We have to deal instead with feelings of unworthiness, our inadequacies and our excuses, our humanity, and our pain… so much pain.
The burdens we share should inspire universal love and compassion. It does for me, and yet all I see is ever-increasing hate in the world. Another reason to grieve. It’s no wonder I would rather write and live in my own little world than continually bear witness to the imbalance, the insanity.
Oh, I know grief has its profound beauty. We can experience joy, happiness, sadness, hurt, and none are permanent states. They are moments that come to us, moments to awaken us, moments to experience with all of our hearts. In that sense, we must embrace every one of them. And I do.
“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.” ― Mark Twain
Sometimes we lose someone who may not have been that close to us, yet we think they should have been. Those ties were supposed to bind but didn’t. Instead, they turned out to be so weak, they broke a little more at every difference of opinion, every instance where we stood up for ourselves, every time people looked at us and didn’t see themselves. Maybe it was some argument, someone else’s stupid meddling, someone’s denial. Maybe it was all because of lies and fragile egos, people trying to turn one against the other, smear campaigns, and the rush to judgment.
So there was a death that day, but we didn’t lose the person then. We lost this person long ago, and it broke our hearts a thousand times already. Is this someone we really had or truly knew? We lost that chance. We lost to the dysfunction. Not even the obligatory love and commitment could save it. It got to a point where suiting up and showing up simply hurt too much.
Somewhere along the line, we’ll see some display of genuine family love and laughter, and we want that, all the while wondering why we didn’t get it, and so we grieve that.
Yes, we mourn what we couldn’t have, and death is not only a reminder; it is the finale. We say goodbye with so much weight, with a burden too hard to hold. There are holes that will never be filled, stories that will never be heard, never told, and scars that won’t heal. There is grief in isolation. It’s more than sorrow. It’s devastation.
You miss what you wanted that to be, but you don’t want it back, not any of it.
Quite honestly, it becomes clearer to me every day, how complicated grief is with all of its added dimensions.
People celebrate certain individuals and shun others. Maybe the shunning was because of addiction or disease, or maybe it was the wrong sexual preference. I don’t know. But one mother and child may have the world to grieve with her, and so she should. In the other case, a parent and child can go through hell with no one comprehending the loss or caring. Others simply deemed the person mourned unworthy for something beyond his or her control, while others are worthy regardless of their choices, because their choices were ones people could relate to, things people didn’t fear for lack of understanding.
I think about these things… and all of life’s unfairness. Life is not fair, nor will it ever be. Accepting that helps but doesn’t heal. There are moments we can’t handle anymore, not just then, no, and we shut down. We have to. And we ask, what’s wrong with me that I feel this way? What’s wrong with me that I see these things others don’t see, that I can’t accept what they accept? What’s wrong with me that I couldn’t fix it, couldn’t explain it, couldn’t stop it, didn’t protest, cried alone? You say, what if they had heard my heart? What if we had resolved all of this? But they wouldn’t have heard, and it wouldn’t have gotten resolved, and we know it. We have to deal instead with feelings of unworthiness, our inadequacies and our excuses, our humanity, and our pain… so much pain.
The burdens we share should inspire universal love and compassion. It does for me, and yet all I see is ever-increasing hate in the world. Another reason to grieve. It’s no wonder I would rather write and live in my own little world than continually bear witness to the imbalance, the insanity.
Oh, I know grief has its profound beauty. We can experience joy, happiness, sadness, hurt, and none are permanent states. They are moments that come to us, moments to awaken us, moments to experience with all of our hearts. In that sense, we must embrace every one of them. And I do.
“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.” ― Mark Twain
