today my body aches {a poem}

Today my body aches.
There is a great gaping wound in my heart
a portal,
and I do not know where to turn to fill it.

yet.

A door has opened.
Don’t you know?
Sometimes,
change comes with lightness,
a brilliant aha
landing with soft feet,
like a feather, beaming light and stardust,
and you, filled with joy, at this new fork in your road.

Ah but –
you sigh,
too many times,
the change feels heavy.

An old wooden door
creaking on its hinges
covered in soot and dustwebs

and the stale air billowing in
from behind its deep-shadow entrance
sends us into recoil.

today my body aches

I can feel, its incessant calling,
its pulling me forward, inch by inch, and
oh how I so not want to go there, yet.

Let me catch my breath,
get my bearings,
understand the road I’ll be taking now
but that’s never the way it goes.

I breathe.

The door stares back.

I must go.

(first published 2016)