Held

The first time you taste the sorrow
of the world
is when you begin to notice
your own mother’s broken heart.
You are a child
and this observation awakens your mind.
You read the muscles
and lines on her face,
the patterns and colors
playing across her forehead,
and it’s like standing at the mirror
because that same story is written
on your spinal column.
You feel it like a lead pearl
at the base of your neck.
You wish something could hold all of it.
Confusion and compassion stirs, mixing this life with all the others.
Singing that sweet sad song of all
the mothers.

Driving to mom’s house one day
I saw a dead lamb
on the shoulder of the westbound highway.
How strange, the little white face turned toward the heavens.
It made me think of Jesus.
How he wanted to be the
very last
human sacrifice.
He wanted to hold the sorrow of the world and take all of humanity’s pain away,
to end brutality, end suffering
with his one sweet life.
That naive hope
was unbending
and sincere.
He must have endured
his own mother’s broken heart so tenderly.

Mortality shines a spotlight
on the longevity of love.
How we have this one chance
in this one shared dream
and we love so much it frightens us
and we try to make it last
into the next tiny stack of vertebrae
and it does
and it could encompass every sorrow
if we let it
if we aren’t too broken to let it pool up
inside us.

This is how we hold on?

🌿✨❄️🔮

Words and art by Merenda Cecelia