I’ll tell you my story
If you tell me yours
We each have so many
Which to share in this here and now?
We’ll tell them piece by piece, bit by bit
And see if we recognize
Each other in them
Some of mine may sound different than yours
But still may lay open
Some part of the human cloth
We both do wear
Some will stir memories, echoes
Of places we have been
Lives we have led -
Others will leave questions more
What was that like?
How would it be
To have been there?
How do we make it safe to tell?
We look, we smile
Or I frown when you do frown
We sit alert or sigh
And settle more in this
Soft or hard real-life chair
Each time I tell
Each story will come out different
Because each moment I will change
The river of my life will wash me in a different wave
If my story does honor my past, does make it real
Then it also shows why this moment, too, is true
“So this is how I came to this here and now
This is the only way it could have been”
If my story shares my now with dignity
Even in the humiliations of this human life
Then it also claims my past
As nothing but human, too
If it got me here
It is valid as it is
To change it might make me you
Or some other soul I would not know
I can wrestle with these demons of mine
Better than could you or them
If I took on yours or theirs
They would take me down
In no time flat
I never grew those muscles
That keep you or them alive
Each tale implies a future
How could all this life-flow end?
Only our minds
Separate past, present and what’s to come
They are all alive here and now
We shine a light on them
One by one
If my story is to reach your heart
I must break it open to the truly human core
That place which is most vulnerable, cracked
And so alive
That part I would most protect
Hide, camouflage, prettify
If you have not gone where I describe
You still have felt what I have felt
You will recognize the urge to hide
And the release in finally not
If this part of my story is not you
The telling of it is
I tell myself stories about my life
That hurt me more than what went on
I make myself villain, goat, victim
Of the play.
I must tell them
Again and again
This way and that
Until I find the thread that is most true
In that thread I am nothing but Life
No longer separate
My unique story takes me home
Where I am you as you are me
Where we are more than we can see
Life tells its infinite story through us
As each wave, for a moment
Describes the sea
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1 comment:
As I read this poem again, I really thought about how I tell my story to others and do I just hit the positive highlights, certainly not all the challenging highlights, or do I choose a little of both. There are parts of me that I've experienced that I would never include in my story. Is it that my friends wouldn't understand or wouldn't care or maybe they would feel helpless to support me and wouldn't know how to help? Or rather is it that revealing these parts would make me seem less than altogether and confidant and "normal" (what does normal mean anyway)?
Maybe it's a combination of all of the above depending on the relationship I have with that particular person...that answer seems to resonate right now. In this present moment.
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