What We Are Given

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

Some days are for tears.

Some days are for blinking them back.

Some days are for holding onto them tightly, in a miserly fashion, like a secret treasure locked deep inside where no one can see.

A gift; a curse, a cross, a cleansing. 

But tears are tricksters: They cleanse only when they flow. Bottled up, bereft of eyes to fill, of cheeks down which to fall, they cut and wound and inflame.

Today, I thought, was not a day for tears. They tried to come, unbidden; they knocked on the door of my heart all day. I squared my shoulders, slammed the door, shot the bolt.

No time.

Oh, it hurts, this incessant knocking on my heart. But I have a secret: I'm used to pain, and I can ignore it. If I ignore it long enough, the knocking will cease. Or, if it doesn't, at least I'll have grown immune to the sound and pulse.

I almost made it.

But some gifts will not be denied.

A beloved friend sends me news of the visitation honoring another friend just gone, of grief and loss and celebration all braided into one. 

She sends me an image: my words, given form and being. 

She sends me a gift that touches me beyond description, a gift from people I've never had the privilege to meet in person, a final gift from someone we both loved who now rides the light.

And the tears, locked inside a willfully icy heart, melt and find their way out.

These gifts we are given abrade; they heal; they demand recognition; they deserve honor.

And so the heart fractures and yet reknits even as it cracks, joined together by the warmth of the tears as they fall.