When you feel the impossible
breathing down your neck
you're on the right track. Don't
stop, the physics of moving create the energy
that will keep you alive. Life is fierce. There is space
beyond trauma, a place
not quite fully imagined. There is no map, no path,
only pathlessness. Mystery is
a wild freedom, a way to
stitch the body to the soul again, outside of
the dogma of patriarchy, which tells us
to live without telling
the truth of how we got here.
No path in or out.
What is lost is lost. Do not remove
the people who do these things
from the community - force them
in close, so their faces
touch my face, where I'm safe
and they must inhale the width and breadth
of their violence. Set them loose
into the crazy range of mountains where bears
rule, where they must learn
to recognize the berry from the poison
or die, how to make fire with a stick
and a ribbon, how
to dig and dig with their hands
under hot red suns
to find a trickle of water
they yearn to drink, only
they can't drink until they carry
water to the crones roosting in the tops
of dark raggedy pines, in cups
fashioned out of bark and mud
that cracks their palms and soles. They will be
deeply compelled. Forgiveness
isn't binary, we can't honor our complexity
within the systems that produce
the people who would do these things. You belong
to a ferocious pack now, on the edge of earth, flowing
over spiky canyons, scrub and thistle, flowing through
cities like fog, we cannot be contained. We clean wounds
with stones, we hunt and cook on our own. Nobody
in this world
is free - some of us are healing. Maybe healing
isn't about forgiveness, maybe
there are too many questions for it to be so simple, such as how
do we define justice and ultimately
love? Build your healing outdoors
where you can stoke raging fires - beyond
linear thinking - be open
to the possibility
that liberation depends
on our ability to examine the essential
dynamics of power. Are we able
to dismantle power? Be fearless. Perhaps
there is no justice for survivors in
this world, perhaps
we make a new world. My rapist will never
pay for his crimes. There is
no evening the score, there is no
lost and found. There is courage, though,
and open space to create
the beginning
of being fully seen. It's born
in the darkest hour, it emerges
in conversation with another. Like this. You
will make your way, I will find it
glorious -
Adele/Machines/Field
photograph ©EUnderwood 2017
Speak Truth To Power
#metoo