From the Inside

These days when the torrents of grief flood deep,

when sorrow pools like blood on the floor,

in these days when I can do nothing but meet this moment,

when I am too spent to say hello,

love comes to meet me where I am.

It holds me while I cry. It cradles me where I sit.

It steps with me as I walk. There was, at first,

a moment when I tried to push it away,

alarmed by this onslaught of love.

Too much, I protested, arms up in resistance,

but love obliterated my no.

It moved in to hold me from the inside,

slipped into my tissue, my bones,

infused itself into each tiny cell, each organelle,

and made inside me a home. Since that moment,

I am never alone. Now it is love that moves my hand.

Love that shapes each word. Love that helps me rise.

Love that pours the tea.

Love that wakes with me in the middle of the night.

Autonomic love that makes the heartbeat,

autonomic love that makes the lungs breathe.

autonomic love that meets the impossible grief

and surrounds it with impossible grace.

Love that grips me around the heart

as if to save me from drowning.

Love that murmurs again and again,

I’ve got you, Sweetheart, I’ve got you.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer