After a Rain

A Poem by Bowersox

There is a deep pain I feel. Ever since she left it seems to grow larger.

This pain of mine--for it is mine and I must own it--is a swelling of fear and loneliness. Wave after wave it comes slapping against my soul at times as if the undertow is going to drag me beneath and carry me out to sea. Perhaps there I will no longer think of her, long for her if I am miles and miles from land without the sights and sounds and smells of her. These reminders penetrate and conquer.

‘I miss you’ I say with no one there to hear. I begin to cry this fear of parting ways days have turned into weeks with no hearing of your voice or feeling of your touch. You were a part of me as we were a part of each other. We ebbed and flowed our sum and substance coming together as we embraced the whole of you and the whole of me to form our

we.

And now it is gone, lost at sea

For me I ache

Yearning to find

To be

That whole of we

Without the you

That formed our beauty.

You likely have little idea of this pain, this particular version of it anyhow. I wish I could see you to touch you to smell you to… but this is no more.

Acceptance is a difficult thing an anomaly that pervades this life and the strife that comes with holding that we have parted ways. It’s the haze the mist that runs down my cheek as I lie alone hoping upon hoping you will come home…

My throat aches and my eyes burn as I begin to see you are unbound by the sharing and caring birthed in our relationship that was built in between.

You are free.

I am sorry. My pain is not yours to take on to hear about or have to deal with. I am not yet able to accept we are no more. I’ve loved you and love you now, evermore.

This pain I feel is to the marrow at times bringing me to my knees. I once wrote to you that choosing not to choose is still a choice and how I ache for the possibility that you would choose not to choose now. To consider for a while longer that what we had can be had again. But just as time moves, your mind has decided to close this chapter and go on.

To lose you is an experience I can only feel. Words abound and still they are astounding in their inability to convey a literary meaning of the bareness of my soul.

Without you I weep.

Yet they say in time and days I will regain strength and prop myself up to see a brighter path. Though I have my doubts.

But who knows perhaps as you slip away I may begin to play with the idea that there is hope yet. Perhaps the sun will rise and I will not cry but find a peace in drinking my coffee with someone else. Though I bob out at sea and cannot see this horizon glimpses come and glisten possibilities of a way to be

without you.

This thing acceptance has claws and scars the soul, it tends to role with punches taken what is given and saying ‘okay’ to go on living. I will miss you and now begin my journey of finding a way back to land in hopes of beginning to breath a little easier, to walk a little steadier. I fill my lungs with this reality and a courage to swim away from our fail-hearted connection wells inside me. I’ve loved you and now must say

goodbye.

You have been dear to me, nearer than any other. I wish you well and though time will tell I wrestle with the reality that we have parted ways. You have gone on yours and now I must be on mine.

Our journeys have led us here and yes I fear of what’s to come. I wish it could be found within me to say ‘who knows maybe we will cross paths again someday.’ But I cannot. I know that if I leave the moorings and forge forward without you, it is definitive. What was once intertwined within us, between us, has become unraveled.

To travel and journey seeking a way or a mainstay on my own means beginning to tie myself back together again. I search and seek for the threads I chose to give in weaving us into one another in order to reclaim them. Certainly they are frayed but I am not threadbare, thin and tattered perhaps and while beginning to mend these twines of mine this soul I hold will heal and grow.

I reach out to you only to let go.

More tightly bound this twine builds a strength found in sitting with this pain without providing prospect for it to overcome. It holds these bones together containing this sorrow by being good enough. I am not perfect and in feeling broken now I reach within to hem ragged edges, to trim the hedges and remove our we in order to see more clearly

me.

You are a beautiful person and I will miss you greatly though even this missing must be let go and hastened. Chances for rekindling our coming together are quite a ways beyond what some may constitute saving. As I begin to more clearly see me I dream and in these dreams I begin to approach a place unknown, not entirely comfortable sensations of masses and messes of emotion whirl inside me.

A storm began many months ago and you know I was terrified of the rain stopping, for this fear that sat there before us was itself our hearts breaking. And now the pieces of me lay spattered and splattered on the surface seemingly unable to find relief. Much of this pain I feel is found in the dreams and plans we had together and no longer share. I cared and wanted nothing more than to have a cabin on lake with you with whom to… but this is no more.

Those ties that used to bind are being severed and in using this twine I braid new guides for me to swim ashore. Time does tend to help. With each knot I gain and frame a resiliency, grit to perform stroke after stroke until I am afloat and beginning to move with the currents as they feel appropriate.

This sensation of solidity works its way from the inside out and in its humility is a warming embrace strengthening in its simplicity and scar-borne grace. So it is I face forward and seek lightness in this journey of being and becoming. With equal reluctance and resolve I open my eyes and notice my feet planted on solid ground.

Perhaps those are rays I spy as they peak and poke through the cumulous providing hope. And then it comes

the sun is shining after a rain.