Misery, Mystery, Mess

More on becoming through recovery

Photo by Julian Schultz on Unsplash

I am slow to learn sometimes.
I do dawdle, linger over the stories
of despair and the ones that taste
like lettuce after it has bolted.

I fancy the architecture of anger,
what those heavy beams are made from,
and where they were harvested;
the likes of these angles and dimensions,
how deep into the world the palace lives.

I’ve done my best to stop pretending
I know much of anything. I’ve
had to give up a lot: objects, houses, vehicles, 
yes, but mostly stories. Mostly the mystique
of misery. Funny how that word is almost
“mystery”, how it longs to slip two letters deeper
into the truth, how one vowel and a consonant
can change everything. I suppose the choice
is mine.

I do not always know the calling, the white
blossom of becoming with its beckoning
curvature. But I know what it is to ask,
and wait for an answer. I know what it is
to wander through the world and begin
myself again and again until I start
to understand that we were not designed
to station our minds in one place for very long,
that the misery that is the mystery is only
static because so many of us were not taught
how to love that which is broken;
how to cover a cut with compassion,
bless a bruise with benevolence, how to
wash a wound with wonder.

And I am one of those people who is flailing
on the front lines of my life, reaching for
anything that could cure me of my emotional
maladies. I am
one of those people who sits for a long time
on the stoop of confusion, knocking
on clarity’s door, seeking, wanting, making
a fool of myself until I get that that is
the whole point, and I might as well go home
and laugh into my heart, into the hurt places,
into the void, or cry until flowers bloom along
the swales of my suffering. 

Take me. Take me into this mystery, misery, mess
So that I can learn to love and love and love.

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