You vulnerable
offering up surrender
in linear practical terms
so that the tenderness escaped me at first.
Only a moment or two
when terror grabbed my heart
and squeezed its witchy claw
making throat contract and twist
stomach wind and churn
prefrontal cortex desperately hanging on by a thread
attempting to make sense of the panic that hijacked sanity
fast and hard.
I did not know then
when brain and body were severed
that it was the smell of my father’s cologne on your neck
combined with conversations of bending over
naked and exposed,
while taking control and power
that erased forty from forty-seven
until all that remained was the child
alive in my body
terrified of father.
Then you, in your vulnerable,
turned to confusion
so that my repeated negations of your
“are you okay?”
could not be fully heard nor understood.
Just as my requests to steer clear of the
topic of your vulnerability
and my terror
could not be honored
until the thread snapped
so that space was needed to tie ends together
to find the forty
and reclaim the body that made rational thought
as fleeting and insubstantial as gossamer wings.
Then later,
returning with brain and body
more substantially secured
finding your vulnerability turned to stone,
and your desperate search for understanding and compassion
in the face of your own need for understanding and compassion
seemingly
irretrievably
eradicated.
I then felt myself named the source of your suffering
and distance became the lifejacket
for your own reclamation of sanity.
Light without substantial form
blinds
and with substance
creates shadow.
It takes courage to stand in the shadow
but,
we are not always courageous beings.
We are, after all
only human beings —
tender, vulnerable, fallible.
So here we are,
in the crux of choice that every relationship faces
at least a hundred times, or a thousand.
Do we keep our emotional safety with our respective distance,
give shadow more weight than light,
or do we soften into vulnerability
again
and forgive each other’s humanity and incapacity for connection
and compassion at a difficult
moment in time?
There is no shame in deciding no,
No honor in deciding yes.
For now, the question holds,
Do we ground the love we’ve professed
in the deep soil of repair
or do we spin it light like cotton candy
surrender it to wind and let it float away
like gossamer wings.
© Sabrina Santa Clara, 2012