Mother of pain

In the beginning

she’s a spark of stunned confusion.

Humbled by the abyss of her ache

and baffled by her sudden scale,

we wallow in her,

skirting the outer bands of her storm,

afraid to approach her intensity.

Her center seems a place that stings

unbearably and eternally,

where we imagine our near-future-self

caving,

crumbling,

dying,

jumping,

bursting,

collapsing,

relapsing—

But in a brief moment

of powerfully soft presence,

allowed to weep without narrative

and let go of the ‘why’,

we slip into in the eye of her storm

and watch as her winds howl and

claim every useless thing in sight.

We observe her wrath, safely,

from her tiny window of calm.

Suddenly she is mere sensation,

wanting just a gentle touch

like baby wanting mother’s arms

and its eyes lovingly looked into

while you affirm: ‘I see you’.