Pericardium

In the hollow cave of heart
lie the remains of a love, the bones.
you carry this death with you Every Where
a walking graveyard.

When you try and speak
these bones lodge in the small openings of your throat.

How many others hold on to the dead
like this?
a world that knows not about letting go.

This putrid matter roots inside you
upwards roots from a heart corner up
through the crescent moons of your oesophagus
branching left and right across your pale neck

you get sick often.

The remedy
is in the descent.
down, back
inside
the walls of your heart throb with grief
even after so long.

So plant a small cross inside your pericardium
to honour this mourning along the roads inside you
here, something died.

***

For those that love too much – Part IV^*

Pay attention to your dreams. There, he comes often.

In one, he tries to kill you, his strong hand wrapped around your neck, one hand enough to fit around you, he squeezes. You wake up sweating, unable to cry or scream. The right side of your neck hurts for days.

In another, you see him again: he carries a newborn in his arms. She’s back in my home, but how have you been? Detached, cold, a lack of love that feels painfully familiar, the bitterness of betrayal fills up your mouth. You awaken, shivering, your chest is constricted.

Dreams that reveal what we have buried in the name of a full recovery. We want to stop feeling anything, thinking, to stop grieving and mourning so much. We want to become stones. We burry these small parts that still carry aliveness of feeling. Get over it, it’s been so long – you’re still talking about it. No one really understands. This is why our body becomes sick over and over, in an attempt to bring to surface these remains.

It’s been so long, you refuse to believe there is anything left to mourn. Grieving doesn’t follow timescales and counted days on your calendar. Your grief has no deadline, no expiry date.

Look.
Your lungs are an upsidedown tree. Your lungs are temples of grief. Trees that also shed leaves like any others in sync with the forests. Leaves, shaped like teardrops. Allow this process in its entirety. With one hand, tap the scaffolding of your chest that keeps it all together.
Tap tap tap with deep reverence for this grief inside you, tap like a heartbeat.

Autumn, season of grief,
cycles,
flow with them always in Truth.




_{*This forms part four of a series of writings/poems/thoughts that I wrote in my healing, recovery and understanding of a toxic relationship and its dynamics. Healing from narcissistic abuse, from a toxic relationship where our self esteem, our mental and physical health have been greatly damaged, isn’t a linear journey. If you’d like to read the other parts that have been written over the course of the past two years about this particular story, click here: Part I, Part II, Part III.}