Breathing Words

Writing: This week, try writing from the body. What does this mean? Most importantly, it is about paying attention: noticing, feeling,and then, describing.

Night fell and I was blind. Black enveloped me.

Were my eyes open? No.

But what were those bolts of blue and green darting in front of me—a trick of moonlight on wallpaper? No, because there was no moon that night. No stars. No shadows.

Yet, even in the absence of light, there’s… something. Beneath the thin veil of flesh that covered my eyes, electric flashes of dark color continued to both mock and perpetuate the blackness that shrouded my sight.

I lay there, huddled beside my sister in the center of the full-sized bed, but I could not feel her heat. The house was cold in late October because Mom never used central heat, but I felt no cold. I felt nothing. Not even my fingers clenching the thick quilt to my chin.

No, that’s not right. I felt one thing—my heart. I heard it too. I heard everything. Beating, burning, blistering, bleeding, and bellowing. The storm howled with me, slamming wind and rain against our windows. Our olive tree, ravaged by the furious wind, unleashed its own wrath with a thousand rat-a-tat-BOOM-BOOM-BOOMs—broken music created by fallen olives on our aluminum porch awning.

The skies mourn with us. As they should.

Thunder without thunder filled the small room and my breath stopped.

My God! Can this be true? My father has died. I cannot breathe, I cannot live. Oh God, help me live. Help me survive this night. Just this night. Help me live through this darkness.

And so I prayed, my silent words screaming into the night.

As another BOOM echoed into the night, I heard Mom sit up in the other room.

“Is that you?” she whispered.

No, just olives. He’s not coming back. He can’t come back.

I had tried to tell her earlier, when we were still at Uncle’s house. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to face the emptiness. I wanted to stay at Uncle’s, at the unfamiliar, so that I could pretend that it hadn’t happened.

“I have to go home,” she had said. “He’s going to go home, and I have to be there. He’ll be sad if I’m not there.” I don’t think she was even really talking to me. She hadn’t looked at me or anyone else. She was blind too.

With a wall between us, we waited. She, for him; and I, for her. It was timeless, it was an eternity.

And then she sighed, soft and aching, and I heard the creak of her bed.

“Sleep,” I pleaded in silence. “Just sleep.”

But, she did not sleep. In fact, she did not sleep for days, and sat up countless times to the joke of the olives.

But, by the grace of God, I had slept. That night and many other nights. And my pain slept with me, stirring occasionally, but never fully waking, as I worked and smiled and prayed and loved, day after day and year after year. And my writing slept with me, careful not to wake the pain that lay beside it, understanding that sometimes, to rest is to survive.

Five years have passed. I am waking up now, all of me. It’s so cold, but when I see the dew on our overgrown lawn glittering beneath the morning sun, I know warmth is coming. Some has already arrived.