06 December 2006

(to myself last year)

Dear Last December,

I saw you on Saturday night and that is when this whole thing got hard.

All at once you were right there ahead of me, your figure moving beneath the yellow lights, and I thought I was going to divide into a thousand pieces. The hat was drawn over your eyes and your head was bowed. You were striding straight forward, across that windy sidewalk, through a freshly constructed hell.

Oh misperception. Oh unwarranted tears. I can't stop you. I didn't before and I can't now.

Oh Virginia, I had to come closer before I could get further away.

I was afraid that if I got closer, we might collide, meet eye to eye. I was afraid you'd get back inside of everything. I didn't want to remember how it felt to be you, or that once you were me.

Look at you—so blindly keeping walking. You're so angry and foolish and wrong! You're so hemmed in by your own assumptions, so trapped and entangled! I would bind up your feet. I would stop you where you stand. I would close up the road in front of you. But I can't.

I think you need to go that way, somehow.

Now I am living at home.
At home I am healing and learning to heal.
I will heal you, if I possibly can.

You don't know, you don't, how the world will shift up, or when it does what the contours of the road will be. One day you'll wake up and this doubt will have loosened its grip. One day the serpents will unknot and slip traceless from your stomach. One morning you'll feel as if a whole layer of self has evaporated, disappeared; but the parts that hurt won't exist anymore.

It might make you feel empty, at first.

Wait it out.

Here, much farther on the other side, there is a new generosity towards everything. Whatever happened or whatever you've done, whatever think has been done to you, you'll heal. Wait for the marks of mercy—they'll come, sometimes scripted in unknown tongues—you'll feel their touch and you'll learn to read them. And maybe here, quieted and at peace, the curiosity will begin to burn you again, to probe the darkness unafraid,

And maybe I will.

Love,
Monday Afternoon

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hannah.....your words are beautiful because they speak of hope.

This is an exciting time in our lives. Life is so full.

Keep smiling, gorgeous.

beijos said...

you're great

Anonymous said...

"One morning you'll feel as if a whole layer of self has evaporated, disappeared; but the parts that hurt won't exist anymore."


Hannah, you're great. I love going back to older entries, suddenly feeling so connected to these words.
Love you.