Is this a Message?

Is this a message?
I need a message! I hunt for messages.
Everything is a message, I simply need to decipher them.
THINK. THINK. THINK.
Decode.

There is safety in knowing.
The plan will direct me, I trust.
I long for trust and safety and certainty
in an unsafe world.

Why dd Eric die? Why my mom?
Why everything?

I listened, I watched for messages.
I was a good student, a good girl in this game of life.
Ah... I sense righteousness.
Maybe that's the mortal flaw?

Where can I find peace in a world of messages?
How can I enter the fulcrum point of
heart, mind and soul?
Oh, I mustn't forget the body.
But it's the body that seems to trap me.
Trap me into this illusion of pain
and suffering and feelings and loss.

It is clear I still grieve.
I will probably always grieve.

Is this a message? Is grief the message?
According to some I must somehow
transcend grief.
Some? Who?
Fuck! I don't understand "the way."

I stop. Rest here in this welling pain of
anxiety strangling my body.
My body temple, holding my dreams
and giving me feet to live into them.
But where shall I go?

I'm not sure of where to go and
I open to the Divine for those messages.

Thank you. I feel you enter me. I feel the
softening of "okay-ness" and comfort
and no messages to decipher.
I allow a welcoming breath
to nourish my insides.
Though I still sense a slight
burn in my heart.

I know and feel what this is.
The clutches of grief reminding me of
my humanness.
Reminding me of my capacity to love.

Maybe I don't need messages.
Maybe breath is all I need. And a space
to empty words onto a page from
that well of uncertainty and loss.

The well wants to give sustenance.
The well is love in all its unique and
fractured aspects.
A part of me allows this trust.
The love.

So maybe the message is love?
Maybe I'm making it all too complicated
by searching for messages other than
love.

And although my anger retorts, "but love hurts,:
the wisdom integrates the love that is.

I am the message, perhaps. I am love,
I know. I am body and soul and
mind and heart and so utterly
human.

As time passes, I don't want to circle
back around to grief. I don't want to
re-experience the warm tears and
emptiness and fears of the future or
sadness of the past which suffocate me.
But I know I can soften around
all of it. I know I can allow
and not judge, and feel and
breathe and let love in.

I can remember the message -
the only true message - is love.
And simply be.

Inspired by a line in a poem by Eleanor Lerman: "is this a message."

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