Cycles of Violence

Cycles of violence color my life. Cycles of inherited pain, unwitnessed tears, silenced mourning, periods of grey. I have lost lovers. I have lost redemption. Crushed dreams and blackness...

Where do our histories take us? I've been hearing stories from my mother: gendered violence, sexual violation, unreconciled abuses. The men she married were complicit in the horror - my father was complicit. His pain is unquestionable - present in his face and in his house. I miss my father deeply.

I have been crying the past two weeks. I have witnessed the woman I love with another man and her memory of me vanish. I have wept tonight. I have driven my spirit into exile through pain. Still it persists...

Much must die. Most must die. But not all things die. Some things, some refined, very light things will not be stopped - I seek those things with all my being. It is through tears my spirit experiences the depths of lost and absence and it glories in its power to live through pain. Despite Pain. A refusal of death at the heart of its gift. Glory.