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