Wake up.
Drink a tall glass of water with ice and lemon
And reach your arms above your head.
Notice your belly go soft as you inhale
Pull back the curtains of your heart as your ribcage lifts.
It’s good to reach outside of yourself once in a while
To extend curled fingertips and caress the empty space.
Wake up the bones and muscles that waltz you cross the earth.
This floating rock of dying and living hangs round your shoulders
a wet cloud that casts a shadow,
by which its cold comfort, you've been seduced.
Look up.
If you stay slumped inward, swirling in the dark
You will forget how to dance
how to sing and breathe.
An open chest feels like a target,
a tall spine
a threat.
To take up space after shrinking and shrinking
requires you stop running and grow r00ts.
It’s not complicated
Just difficult.
Drop the barricades and feel.
Release the bridle from your jaw.
Exhale through your ears and let be the torrent in your soul.
It's only scary to be witnessed if you fear what you see.
Peel the daggers from your gaze and in their place, spread the salve.
You’re afraid of your raw open skin
of breaking the dam.
But to let flow unimpeded the creatures of madness
brings peace to the bay.
Unzip your skin and expel what you've swallowed
Stop clawing at the fingers round your throat.
A loving touch does what no force of power can do,
softens what's been calcified and loosens what is stuck.
This shame of living is yours to release.
Now drink your fill and deeply pour.
About the Creator
E. B. Rowland
From the heart of motherhood, where tenderness and chaos share a breath, I write because I must - to make sense of living, to uplift the overlooked, and to outpour the magic of living raw to the bone.
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