Member Poem

Write out your feelings, they say, write about
the hurt and anger, the depths of sadness and grief,
And you’ll be released.
Write and it will drain from your body, emptying you.
You will be cleansed.
You will be open to fill again with joy and purpose.

The bad mother scrubbed her child’s body with bleach,
Grinding the scrubber into its skin
Until it was raw and tender and disinfected.
The other bad mother banished thoughts of self from her child,
Casting out demons, like searing the bare soul with fire
Until it was black and bubbled and peeling off.
The children were stripped clean inside, down to the bones,
Open to fill again with joy and purpose.

If you don’t write about it, it will fester.
It will transform into a globule of germs, cooking inside you.
It will clog the bottle neck when you try to empty it.
It will spread and infect all of you, until it’s impossible to get out.

If you don’t write it and kill it, it will harden into a rounded ball
Like a marble, dense and murky. Glinting like a tiger eye.
It will sit heavy on the bottom of your gut.
Inert.

If you write about your hurt and anger and sadness and grief
And loss and betrayal and pain and fear,
They will thread amongst the words, curling them
Into configurations you’ve never seen.
Not beautiful, not ugly, just twisted.
A curlicue wall around you, decorative but there.
Your writing with change.
They don’t tell you that.

The child, you know which one, will climb up
And balance beam walk on the warped fence.
They’ll hold their small arms out for balance, but they’ll know each knob and stave.
If you write about it, you’ll watch the child, hands clenched,
And if they fall, you won’t be sure you’ll catch them.
You’ll have to throw yourself under them.

Writing won’t charm them so the child doesn’t fall.
Writing won’t keep the fence low or less treacherous.
Writing won’t ensure you land under them in the right spot
So the child doesn’t snap their neck, finally dying inside you.
They lied, saying writing would make it better.
They told the risky truth.
You write, and the child will climb.
You write, and the child will balance.
Believing in joy and purpose.