A Good Cry for Monday
A root system. Have you ever seen a root system? Some of the fleshy arms are reaching into the ground, deep, deep into the dark soil.
Have you ever seen two plants or trees growing together, how the roots course and turn into one another and ripple up and down, around eachother. They share their touch, moisture that seeps onto their rough outer skin from the damp earth. They share the same earth that gives their green lives strength.
I can see my soul right now when I close my eyes. It's a confusing mesh of twiney sinews coiling around eachother like a root system. My souls fleshy arms are coiled tightly , almost locked, around the fleshy arms of souls around me.
In this dark cavernous place where our souls are - if we could see them - but we can't - it is dark. In this place my mother's soul is wrapped around my own. I feel her locked into my arms, alive, completely with me, well, that was on the day of...the day of the accident.
In the ER, strapped onto a gurney, the curtains pulled around me I could weep. No it's not a weep, it wasn't a weep. It was a moan, sobbing, gasping for breath. When your face is hot, when my face was clenched in a painful form. I felt for the first time there - no, it wasn't the first time there was once before, when the medics were cutting off the rest off my clothes....I thought, my mom, my mom is really gone. I am bleeding inside, I will need to be cut open and stitched together. How about my son? Is he bleeding inside, no, he will be ok....and I can't breathe, I can't move. The pain is too much for me to take any movement of breath in my own body.
And then the thought again - my mom. And quickly the round nurses face was there staring at me shouting something at the doctor, her voice shrill with urgency. No, no, I'm the same, my body is the same. I just can't breathe because the roots that are in my soul, locked in, coiled around me, my other system, the one that shares it's life - in those deep, dark, damp living caverns of my soul, I feel the wrentch. The severed, no not severed, it is - my mother is - being pulled and pryed out of my souls fleshy arms.
My chest heaved and my body ached, my eyes - big, green, electric, screamed raw pain that was trapped and caged. Impossible to move breath out of my body.
So the hot tears ran silently.
In the ER strapped down to the gurney, the curtains were pulled around me, my son - on the fourth floor. Me alone. The nurses gone. The pleasant warm rush of morphine, begining to numb the pain to a dull and cold ache.
My boy and I, we have a matching game. But today we have matching white bracelets with new names. Today I am Echo 8024. It's 11 am, I thought it was still pitch black night, to me it is deep black. Hard to see or make out any shapes. When I close my eyes, the white curtains pulled closed, go somewhere else. My aloneness goes somewhere else. Back to the gray smokey air and desperation. Loud, O Gods. The huge thing in the blackness, the shape that's not a shape. That's just there.
And my hot tears roll fast down my face and my head shakes back and forth, loosing the pearl clips that were placed so delicately and purposefully in my hair this morning, wait, yesterday. I'ts been a day. When my mom was there telling me how beautiful I looked. Gazing at her grown daughter with proud, silent eyes.
And my chest heaves in, it heaves out, in expressions of anguish, b/c my mothers' soul - its arms that have wrapped so tighly around me for all my life. Before I was spit out into the world. Her soul has held me - there in the dark, damp womb. Inside her body, I was hers and she was mine. Parts of me that have long since grown and changed, parts of me that I may never know exist, mememories that I will never remember. All of me, experienced my mother and held onto her in desperation for life, curled tighly, neatly warmly inside her body. Wrapped in her soul.
And now I am...through out these days...I have thoughts. But it isn't thoughts that hurt me. it isn't memories that bring stinging tears to my eyes.
No, its the prying, the pulling up of her roots out of the settled places where they had grown in a slow and steady way. There used to be a heavy touch on my soul where I could feel her presence. That internal touch, weightyness. The maturity of thick heavy roots intertwined together - the co-existence, co-joy, co-pain, co-shame, co-indignance, co-love.
The heaving, that shudders painfully through my body suddenly, it is from the hallow, empty shafts left behind. The hallows, cast in the form of her souls fleshy arms. Where my soul feels no touch, no tight coil, no thick rippling up and down, around and through. Only the deep, deep dark soil, in that damp cavern, warm.
Have you ever seen two plants or trees growing together, how the roots course and turn into one another and ripple up and down, around eachother. They share their touch, moisture that seeps onto their rough outer skin from the damp earth. They share the same earth that gives their green lives strength.
I can see my soul right now when I close my eyes. It's a confusing mesh of twiney sinews coiling around eachother like a root system. My souls fleshy arms are coiled tightly , almost locked, around the fleshy arms of souls around me.
In this dark cavernous place where our souls are - if we could see them - but we can't - it is dark. In this place my mother's soul is wrapped around my own. I feel her locked into my arms, alive, completely with me, well, that was on the day of...the day of the accident.
In the ER, strapped onto a gurney, the curtains pulled around me I could weep. No it's not a weep, it wasn't a weep. It was a moan, sobbing, gasping for breath. When your face is hot, when my face was clenched in a painful form. I felt for the first time there - no, it wasn't the first time there was once before, when the medics were cutting off the rest off my clothes....I thought, my mom, my mom is really gone. I am bleeding inside, I will need to be cut open and stitched together. How about my son? Is he bleeding inside, no, he will be ok....and I can't breathe, I can't move. The pain is too much for me to take any movement of breath in my own body.
And then the thought again - my mom. And quickly the round nurses face was there staring at me shouting something at the doctor, her voice shrill with urgency. No, no, I'm the same, my body is the same. I just can't breathe because the roots that are in my soul, locked in, coiled around me, my other system, the one that shares it's life - in those deep, dark, damp living caverns of my soul, I feel the wrentch. The severed, no not severed, it is - my mother is - being pulled and pryed out of my souls fleshy arms.
My chest heaved and my body ached, my eyes - big, green, electric, screamed raw pain that was trapped and caged. Impossible to move breath out of my body.
So the hot tears ran silently.
In the ER strapped down to the gurney, the curtains were pulled around me, my son - on the fourth floor. Me alone. The nurses gone. The pleasant warm rush of morphine, begining to numb the pain to a dull and cold ache.
My boy and I, we have a matching game. But today we have matching white bracelets with new names. Today I am Echo 8024. It's 11 am, I thought it was still pitch black night, to me it is deep black. Hard to see or make out any shapes. When I close my eyes, the white curtains pulled closed, go somewhere else. My aloneness goes somewhere else. Back to the gray smokey air and desperation. Loud, O Gods. The huge thing in the blackness, the shape that's not a shape. That's just there.
And my hot tears roll fast down my face and my head shakes back and forth, loosing the pearl clips that were placed so delicately and purposefully in my hair this morning, wait, yesterday. I'ts been a day. When my mom was there telling me how beautiful I looked. Gazing at her grown daughter with proud, silent eyes.
And my chest heaves in, it heaves out, in expressions of anguish, b/c my mothers' soul - its arms that have wrapped so tighly around me for all my life. Before I was spit out into the world. Her soul has held me - there in the dark, damp womb. Inside her body, I was hers and she was mine. Parts of me that have long since grown and changed, parts of me that I may never know exist, mememories that I will never remember. All of me, experienced my mother and held onto her in desperation for life, curled tighly, neatly warmly inside her body. Wrapped in her soul.
And now I am...through out these days...I have thoughts. But it isn't thoughts that hurt me. it isn't memories that bring stinging tears to my eyes.
No, its the prying, the pulling up of her roots out of the settled places where they had grown in a slow and steady way. There used to be a heavy touch on my soul where I could feel her presence. That internal touch, weightyness. The maturity of thick heavy roots intertwined together - the co-existence, co-joy, co-pain, co-shame, co-indignance, co-love.
The heaving, that shudders painfully through my body suddenly, it is from the hallow, empty shafts left behind. The hallows, cast in the form of her souls fleshy arms. Where my soul feels no touch, no tight coil, no thick rippling up and down, around and through. Only the deep, deep dark soil, in that damp cavern, warm.
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