ripped open

there is nothing to do
with that place that life
has ripped open in you….

a place so raw and open and gaping
that you feel a little naked,
walking down the street….

even though it’s day, and you’re fully dressed,
and really don’t look any different from other days….

it’s just that now,
there is this hole inside of you….

it might be a broken heart,
it might be a place that used to be occupied by
a loved one who
once walked here and now doesn’t,

it might be that your children left home,
or the job you had for twenty years just evaporated….

whatever it is,
you realize, as you walk along, that really,
any old thing might just fly in there
at any minute,

any one’s bad mood,
or cranky stare,
or that lurking despair that sits on city street-corners….

and you realize you need to remember
that you are ripped open,
and take care of that raw place….

and really, what gets ripped away isn’t
what you think you lost….

what gets ripped away, you find out,
is a husk, a shell….

loss rips away complacency….

it rips away all of those things we assume about ourselves….

it rips away what held you in,
blocked your light,

made you play ‘safe,’
but gave only the illusion of protection to you….

and it’s not really a hole
underneath, although it feels like one,

because it hurts so, and it feels
like such a big,
big part of your life is missing now….
and you may not know who you
are yet, in this newly ripped open state,

but you understand that you can choose
to be a member of the walking wounded,
and recite a litany of the hard things that befell you,

and live feeling diminished, smaller, unfinished, unfinishable,

or you can start noticing things
with this newly uncovered tenderness….

you can notice things like a black night sky
just ridiculously crowded with
impossible numbers of blue-white sparkling diamond stars….

you can notice the tenderness with which
a mother wipes her child’s smudgy cheek,
or ancient lovers whisper into one another’s ears….

you can notice a falcon circling toward its nest
high up above you in the windows of a high-rise
in the busy, bustling city….
perhaps you can even hear its cry,
a faint but haunting call, sailing above the
thrum of motors and horns….

you can notice that green leaves make you relax inside….

that a shared stare between you and a coyote in the silence of the dawn
makes you feel that you have passed between you the secrets of the universe….

ripped open by grief
and life
and love….

you are privy to a whole wider world of
tiny magic acts

like trapdoor spiders
and blossoms that turn into fruit

and maybe those aren’t such tiny acts of magic –

maybe that is the whole of life
you are now looking at….

the ancient secret of happiness
staring you right in the face,

and maybe all that time that you wanted something bigger
it was already there
right in front of your eyes…..

and you find that you can love everything,
if you choose....


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©2010
Beth Anne Boardman