Summer 2016

 

Darkness is a beginning

 

Are you feeling a storm within? 

Can you stay with it a bit longer, and then 

scream, sing, pray, but first do what you need

to say to it, “I hear you.”

 

Allow it to move through your abdomen like ripe dark 

berries. Let it stain your rightness like 

melena. This feeling isn’t a coincidence. Your weeping

has a place. Darkness is a beginning.

 

Let the perverse saint in you wash the feet of the

pure sinner. Take your naughty onto the dance floor. 

Resistance makes the madness stronger, so 

twirl instead. Try a dip or two. But try not to shrink away. 

 

Cup the face of what you have judged as the ugly inside, 

and put its whispering to your ear. And once its

voice begins to ebb, having been heard, when it slowly 

fades with the dying notes of its music, 

 

you might just find yourself humming in release, finally 

 

healed. 

 

 

                       -Tumí Johnson