My Chest

Notes from the Hollow Bone | entry forty-two

There are evenings when the body remembers what the heart was never fully given.

Not in words.
Not even in images at first.

Only in sensation.

A heaviness behind the sternum.
A hollow ache that does not belong to the present moment.
A longing so old it arrives without language.

Tonight the rain made a child of me.

Not childish.
Child.

The part of me that still remembers what it means to want somewhere to fold into.
A place warm enough to receive every undone thing.
A softness that does not ask for explanation before offering shelter.

I think perhaps this is why I have always looked to the moon.

She has always felt maternal to me—
a silver chest above the dark,
quietly holding what the day could not.

Some longings do not ask for answers.
Only rest.

Only the permission to loosen the fist around grief.
To let tears arrive without reason.
To lay down the weight of becoming for one brief and holy moment.

There are wounds we do not know we are still carrying until the body begins to speak.

Mine has always spoken in ache.
In restraint.
In the strange resistance around touch where love should have been easiest.

Mother and daughter.
The place where longing and pride learned to live side by side.

I do not write this in blame.

Only in witness.

Because somewhere beneath every adult composure there still lives the child who once wanted to be held without having to ask.

Perhaps that is what this chest has always been—
not merely flesh,
not only the seat of breath and heart,
but the place where memory keeps its oldest weather.

Tonight I do not ask to be understood.

Only held by what is larger than me:
rain,
moon,
silence,
God,
the great maternal hush of night.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai