To accept this path is dangerous—

the way it leaves you
fractured
scattered
ego-less
and as vulnerable as shelled and broken pale baby birds,
bit by bit coercing unspoken or unidentified truths that
slip out through the cracks
the breaks
at times so frightening they steel and steal your breath

to accept this journey stipulates and extracts truth,
what was, is, and will be
your truth—
sometimes with methods as brutally pointed as an interrogator
of whom you see nothing but silhouette and
of whom you hear nothing but unremitting questioning,
but sometimes
also
with methods as inviting as great, wide, and supple moments
between true friends—
this truth
that then gradually softens the jagged edges and works with tenderness
at piecing them
piecing you
together in the cushioned nest of insight

until—

finally
the experience of pain, that great shaman,
the same truth
that tempers you pang by agonizing pang
and aches deeper than a dehydrated tongue in the sweltering summer Sahara
and gapes around inside until you feel
the other side of the universe siphoned into your belly,
somehow
stunningly
becomes an experience of love
deliberately conjuring up an authenticity—
your very own strong, expansive, ample, beautiful wings—
and
(like the intelligence of blood that both leaks and stops itself from leaking)
is the very thing that fuses and welds and melds you together again

cohesion is its final relinquishment
a gift of you
to you

to accept the way of pain—the eminent truth disperser and dispenser—is
dangerous
but so it is to fly…

.

Relephant:

For the Chaotic Spirits. {Poem}

Author: Kiri Manookin

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina

Photo: Pixabay