I was 12 years old when my mother took her life

Took her life, gave her life, I’ve never understood the difference
Hours earlier she was asking me to sing while her inner angel listened
She kissed my skin and told me things I’d forgotten but was missing.

I’ve kept that in for years and now I’m just beginning to share it.
I’ve healed my heart with prayer and yoga and have somehow learned to bear it.
But we don’t bear our pasts, we dream them, like something
We believe is real. And I acknowledge that there’s evidence for them
but mostly that’s not how I feel.

I feel like here & now is all we have. I feel it closer than my breath
And the stories that we can get swept up in will make a living death.

Do you think a lot? Or do you breathe a lot? Have you tried meditation
If you can’t answer that I’m willing to bet it’s the former you’ve been letting
Run your life and take your joy and push your toward an ending
I know for me, that was true when I was still pretending.

The past is not some real big thing. It’s dust in a pale gray sky.
And if you think it is you can get caught in that, making yourself remember & cry.
I’ll laugh at you, I’m real like that. I can laugh because I’m here.
And you can laugh with me, and we can share that too, because you’ll see that I really care.
It’s just that you’re healed, and you were then too, but you’ve somehow just forgotten
You turned your focus onto unreal things and you let your shame take you back there with them.

When I was 12, I watched her go. I knew she was going to die
and sometimes in life we can’t do too much, we can say our part and stand by.
But there’s something perfect in not doing, or in doing what we can
and letting the rest go like her ashes, sinking slowly from my hands.

 

 

Relephant

The Upside to Committing Suicide.

 

Author: Psalm Pollock

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Oakley Foxtrot/Flickr