"This Garden"

 “This Garden”

My life is one that bleeds, 

And paints the skies with my blood,

That paints the skies with my tears that fall night and day, 

Like the sunset in the sky. 

The sky is not picture perfect in  my book. 

It’s not easy to read, 

Easy to tell my left foot from my right foot.

My silence, it has become more  soothing to me than a thousand instruments playing in this background called life. 

My life has been painted

With the scars that it holds, 

With the rivers that flow. 

My heart has become like the constant silence in a song,

It has become like a hollow shell,

Where the pain has made it’s bed,

In the symphonies of my life.

This heart is one of triumph and pain. 

This heart is one that has been in the thick of battles,

Cutting down the thick green forests that stands in its way,

It has become like a lily in a valley, 

A star in the night sky, 

The pain that hasn’t ceased, 

Has been   imprinted on my heart and mind

Like gangrene,

My flesh has become dry and moldy, 

The smoke has suffocated me

As I have tried to find the words to explain, 

What resides deep within,

The pain that stops me in my tracks. 

I wish I could say that I could fly away like a dove, that I could soar like an eagle. 

I wish that my problems were easy to solve,

That what I felt deep inside could be resonated and felt by someone else. 

The mask beneath my smile fades, 

It is a facade.

My fight, 

It is as if I am fighting, 

While I’m dying,

Fighting for the strength to live,

In a body that doesn’t want to live.

Fighting to understand the things that I have lost,

Trying to understand, 

The pain that lies inside of me, 

Destroying me, 

and thrashes swords at me one by one. 

I’ve been trying to put a name to my silence, 

A name to my pain,

But my words, 

They have become jumbled, 

The light has become darkness. 

My steps  have become heavier than they ever were before.

My voice, struggling to find the words, 

That lie beneath my soul, 

Tucked away, 

Hidden in an abyss, behind the locked door, the frozen door of my heart,

That desires to find the words to what my soul wants to say.

Let me skip to the beat of Grief, and its pain that it brings. 

I’m afraid that, I might try to rush the pain away,

Or wish it away, 

When it desires nothing more than to just be felt, to just be understood, 

To be comforted because it too is in pain, 

It too has a pain of its own,

That it is grappling with. 

That it is dealing with,

and has been dealing with, even before your paw paw passed. 

It too longs to be understood,

To be felt, 

Even though it is complex.

It longs to know why?

But it can’t do that if you push it aside,

If you try to avoid it,

By jumping into friendships and relationships,

It can’t do that.

It deserves to be treated as a friendship,

But why, 

If it is a friend that has hurt me, 

I can’t understand it,

I can’t even reckon in my mind what otr how to describe him, he is a reflection of the pain in my life. 

Maybe my last name should become pain because what bears in my body is pain. 

Pain I didn’t know existed to the extent that it did.

Pain, 

In which my mind has felt lost, 

Crazed, and invisible to everything around me. 

Pain, 

It goes as deep as the sunset, 

And runs and flows as long as the river is, 

As big as the trees in a forest.

Can I be honest?

I’m dying here,

I’m dying,

I’m alive,

But I feel dead, 

Trying not to let my thoughts get the best of me,

But why do I feel dead?

Why do I feel as if my grandpa should be here and not me?

Things get real in this journal.

Things get real here. 

Sometimes fear tries to paralyze me, 

At times I have felt as if I am walking on frozen ice, 

Almost, 

Slipping about to drown, 

In my sea of despair, 

In my sea of misery,

Death calls the dead, 

Not the living right?

My paw paw was alive, but now he is not.

He is in the heavens,

I know, 

Death,  I feel called him home too soon.

I go to a garden,

And I find myself reminded of the flowers you’d plant 

Reminded of the laughter we’d share,

The conversations we'd have, 

But now I am reminded of the death of you, 

And the flowers that are no longer in the path that I walk, 

But became fragile, as they have faded when you died. 

There is no garden for me to run to because it has been destroyed when you died.

The beautiful roses you used to plant, 

The flowers that you were so proud to plant,

Have become thorns, weeds, thistles,

Have become a drought, 

Ashes in a foreign place, 

The same smile that you once showed as you were proud of your gardening, has become washed away, like you. 

The smile that I remember from you, left just so quickly, as it came, 

Things I have known from you have left just as quickly as they came.

I am in a garden,

Weeping,

Crying for you to return to this place in my heart, 

Praying, crying for you to hear the tears, 

My tears that have become evident even in my mind.

Tell me, 

Paw paw, where is the garden?

Where is this garden?

In the valley of life, 

Where is this garden that lies in the midst of this thing called life?

If I knew it, I wouldn’t ask,

I would answer this desperate answer, 

This desperate plea within me.

You took the flourishing garden with you,

When you left,

So I’m here, 

Crying to the flowers, 

That appear to be left,

The flowers that have some semblance of life in them.

I would never know,

For you have perished with the flowers,

You have faded,

Into a life where I can no longer reach you, and took that garden of hope I had left.

What am I to do without you here?

How can I live when my soul can’t even find the garden where you resided,

When my soul is struggling to live in a world, where I feel like dying. 

Life, what is life?

Am I alive or dead, am I breathing?

Can I be with you paw paw?

Can I meet with you, early in the morning,

Where is the path I once knew, 

Where things seemed clear, 

Where the path ahead, was more than a path, 

But a path that leads somewhere. 

If I die today will I see you,

Can I see you in my dreams, 

Or are you merely a mere memory in my life that has left me hanging, 

That has forgotten about me, 

And how I have to move forward with this pain of knowing, 

And not knowing, 

The pain that unbeknownst to me,

Leads me back to the garden where you are,

To the garden where the flowers bloom right?

Where the light shines underneath the darkness?

The light is hard to find in the dark, 

More hard to find when there seems to be no path in sight,

 When there seems to be no map,

To show me from which point I must walk. 

Sometimes, my life feels like a dream. 

My soul cries out to me many times to fly, 

Like a bird, 

But I don’t know what creature I am , 

A bird or an insect,

That has fallen,

And broken in two.

At the thought of death,

The tears fall from my eyes, 

In the moon lit sky.

My soul, 

Is like the river,

Ever flowing, trying to find life in the coldness of this winter, 

In this freezing cold, 

With a season that doesn’t know the cold from the warmth anymore. 

This river that has flowed freely within me has stopped,

It has become blocked,

Wondering if it will ever flow again.

My life is a glass of seas, 

A sea glass, 

Wishing, 

And hoping that the sea within me would be able to break free, 

Break free from the reflection that it holds, 

Within the sea of my life, 

Hoping that the glass will break, or maybe show me what I am missing behind this glass, that longs to be broken. 

I’ve been trying to understand this glass that has shattered and cut me so, 

Trying to understand the mystery behind the mirror,

Where all of my pain resides, even so gently tucked away behind the wall of my heart that has become like the glass of the sea,

Frozen, trying to break free,

Trying to break free, and find my way back to the garden."