I am not myself,
I am the echo.
I am the echo,
Awakening
Revising
Revisiting
Reimagining.
I am not myself,
I am the gathering
of that which has come before.
I am the echo
of remembering.
The mutitude of layers
of remembering.
I am the awakening of right into wrong,
And wrong into right.
I am the witness.
I am loss. I am birth.
I look into the experience, as I am.
A wave of endless memory.
I watch with pain trembling in my bones.
I am the witness.
I am the memory of suffering.
I am suffering, desiring to heal itself.
It says, “let me look again, with new eyes. Let me understand again, with a renewed heart.”
I am the broken, seeking to stand again.
Splintered wooden legs, striving to be remade.
I am the light of the sun, laying its warmth upon the earth.
I am the shadow, the cold of fear and emptiness.
I peer into life, I am nothing.
I am the retelling of a story. I am the weaver of new memory. I am the witness.
I carry the sorrow that’s come before, heavy on my spirit. I carry it close to my heart.
I look into the world through the sorrow of memory.
Shapes of pain and shadow erupting into form and dissapating. My sorrow reminds me of the memory from which I was born into this world.
My sorrow says “this is how we saw the world”.
I think of those that came before, that saw the world colored with darkness.
I say, “I see you. I understand.” I carry their weight as I look with my own eyes.
I see what they saw, I see fear. I look again.
I feel what they felt, I feel pain. I look again.
I see strength where there was silence. I see hope where there was emptiness.
I stand, exhausted. Pen in hand, shakily writing a new story. One small sentence, in a book that has no beginning and no end.
One small sentence at a time. One small re-write. One revision. One re-envisioning.
My voice is small, amongst the raucous cries of the past. My pen is small. My sentences are small.
My voice is small.
And yet, I’ll stand. I will witness.
Underneath the weight of generations of memory, I will write.
With every rewrite, a small path begins to open. A way. A chance. An opportunity.
Love: 