Of Salt and Stones
The old men’s book reprimands me - don’t look backwards, you will turn into a pillar of salt.
Oh, but what the old men don’t realize is that I am the salt.
I am all the tears cried for the dead children who should have lived, for the brokenhearted who trudge onward still, for the lost legacies that should have been mine (and should have been yours.) I am the past all folded (crushed) into the now. Every shame-filled memory, every leadened expectation, every blow weighs me down like a heavy stone, keeping me small, keeping me here (you could make a home here, they whisper.)
But I am not small. And this is not my home.
I am angry. I am seething with rage.
I walk to the edge of the water and drop each heavy stone, warm from leaning against my bones, into the black depths. Weightless, I float and let the waves lap the salt from my skin. The cold is bracing and I remember that –
I am the ocean - wide and long - my anger, my sorrow, my joy rising and falling across this dark watery expanse. I reach inward and pull my ribs apart, arching my back towards the night sky. Every untold story, every cry of anguish pours forward like –
small
caged
birds
finally breaking –
free.
And you touch your face and feel the coarseness of dried salt. When you raise your hand to your mouth, you taste the faraway ocean, too. You lay your salt-streaked face onto the earth and whisper, yes, I remember. I, too, remember.
3/31/2023
Molly Senecal
टिप्पणियां