healing

When you have a wound,
you carry the wound.
After a while the wound
becomes a scar.
And you carry the scar.

Sometimes the scar makes you feel strong.
You run your fingers along its edge.
You say, here, in this place,
I survived.

Sometimes the scar feels like a cord,
forever tethering you
to suffering.
It pulls at you when you wish to fly.
It says, stay here.

But sometimes another thing occurs.
And you don't know it. You never know it,
you don't ever notice when it happens.
You don't feel it in increments.
You don't anticipate its design.

Just, one day, a long time later,
or a short time that feels like a long time,
or a long time that feels like a short time,
you wake up.
And you're okay.

And at some point in that day,
you realize, hey, I'm okay.
You touch the place where the wound was.
Where the scar was.
And it's not so tender, anymore.
It's a map of what was, but the kind of map
where you need reference points and a code and a key
if you want to find your way back
to that original pain.
The way is no longer obvious,
no longer the default mode.

Thirty years ago, in this season,
the season of Kol Nidre, of who shall live
and who shall die, I nearly died
from fevers and a perforated bowel.
And I woke up today.
And I'm okay.

Twelve years ago, today,
I lived in a city of smoke.
And the towers fell.
There were people covered in ash.
My cousin walked 100 blocks.
Where I worked, photos of the lost
lined the entry for a year.
No one slept. We lived as if
in a terrible dream.
This went on for while. And each year,
the reminders.

And then.
Its not that we forget.
We don't. I don't. I never will.
But I woke today under a New Mexico sky.
It had rained all night,
and clouds banked against the mountain
like a Turner painting gone rogue.
And I drove to work and blessed the light.
And then, only then, I remembered.
And I realized, so softly, so gently,
I'm okay.