His life was an open wound

a poem for someone we lost

God, the news has been so bad. It’s so much more than my heart can handle.

This news from Detroit about a homeless family absolutely gutted me. I won’t describe it, so that you can choose for yourself when and how you want to engage with the tragedies of our world. One small way I think we protect our capacity and mental health is being thoughtful about how we absorb everything. I don’t think we should shut ourselves off from tragedy, but I also don’t think our nervous systems can handle being inundated with bad news every time our eyes glance a screen.

In reflecting too on how to keep going amidst so much pain and bad news, I recognize within myself an increased need to process. If I don’t do something with all of what I’m taking in, it will overwhelm me.

I’m not very good at this. But I’m trying.

One of the way I know I need to try more is by processing the grief I experience in the work I do, and not being afraid to do that more openly.

In January, we lost someone I cared about. He was in one of our programs, and I had gotten to know him really well. He had a really hard go at life, and it ended way too early. I’m still processing it, and not doing a great job at it. I’m hurting.

The day it happened, I wrote this poem. I don’t normally write poems, but these words just sort of erupted out of me that first sleepless night.

I share it with you because I think if we’re going to get through any of this, we will have to invite each other in more to our hurting and our healing. I imagine many of you will recognize someone you loved and maybe even lost in the words below. I want to share that with you. I need to. I can’t keep feeling these things by myself.

I invite you, if you want, to share anything you want or need to in the comments. It can be about what you’re feeling right now in the heaviness of this moment. It can be about someone you’ve lost.

Let’s hold this all, together.

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His life was an open wound

If you were willing to look at him, you would see life’s raw beauty

All the sinews and bone and blood that make life precious and precarious,

preposterous but possible,

A fragile miracle

Many could only see the gash,

the mess, the gape,

And turned away for what it made them question or fear about themselves

That we’re all tender, brittle, exposed

But some wear it on the outside

Those who have no choice, who never had enough time or shade or love to sew skin around their heart

For whom everything hurts, so much

He was an open wound, an exposed nerve,

He felt all of it; every little thing, all the time,

and he deserved to choose not to

I am grateful to have seen his heart,

even through the wounds he couldn’t cover

And I pray that whatever has met him beyond envelops him entirely

for as long as he needs

for all he deserves.

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