Tell Me How to Hold a Miracle Without Shaking

They asked me,

How much could you love him?
I said --
I love him
to mornings with no names,
to hands that remembered warmth before they remembered prayer.
I love him to the rhythm of breathing,
and stillness,
and the way silence waits
for someone to come home.
I love him to the end of everything,
and still, somehow,
to the beginning.

Now I have one foot on slippery moss,
the other on firm ground.
I reach for something—anything—
to hold me steady,
but my hands find only air.

He can’t catch me this time.
He can’t pull me back.
Not when he is both—
the ground beneath me,
the fall I cannot stop.

He is safety and risk,
the edge and the anchor,
my life and my undoing.

And as I slip,
I wonder,
Was I ever standing at all?

Ever so often you will find me questioning all that I have. Not in the way that I could have better but in the way that I should have had worse. All that I have is but pure luck and one day the jar will be empty and I would have to sprint through remaining life with an empty jar full of voids. I can't seem to save luck for later because in some ways I'm still greedy for whatever I get. I am not asking God for anything but whatever is granted, I'm keeping, thank you very much. However, sometimes, ever so lightly, I do wish I could postpone a miracle for later use. And I know in my sublimely sane mind that it is not the way of the world but oh! how wonderful would that have been. 

Don't get me wrong: I have much to be grateful about. That I get to sit here in the library and pursue a PhD in English Literature (and literally get paid to think of trauma) is no doubt the answer to countless prayers of countable people. For the people I have with me, the ones I don't and that I get to live the way I do are other blessings I count in my gratitude prayer. 

All this yes but he once said," What a privilege to feel overwhelmed by the growth you once dreamed of". Sure, but I keep looking for cracks in my blessings. What if in reality, I deserved lesser than my prayers and the Lord was just feeling generous that day.  I'm not scared in the way that if good happens to then bad is on its way simply to balance the nature of things but in the way that when good happens, is life simply letting me taste the milk chocolate before it drowns me, heavy pockets and all, in 100% dark chocolate? Because what if I was never meant to have all this?

If I were the reader, this would probably be the exact moment I'd wonder when the author would talk about the lines above the partition. (However, maybe, your readers are more rationally aware and thought of this long before you Diya). These lines, dearest reader, come from a time when this author was, simply put, MOST devastated. Because when our little (or not) Russian friend Dostoyevsky said “The cost of loving someone very much is never being able to love again." and that "What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love”, he was telling me (or us, if you wish to include yourself within the likes of me) that to love someone too much is the way to Hell and that Hell itself is being unable to love. Essentially then in true Fyodor style, we understand it but... we don't do we? 

Do we really understand the pain of happiness as much as we understand that of melancholy? That sometimes the heart falls into the void of the stomach when you are pleasantly surprised to see an unexpected guest or that water escapes the tightly secured bags in the corners of your eyes identifying themselves as happy tears -- which you had save for later...sadder times... possibly when you're alone in the darkness of your black polythene cover. That sometimes you laugh so much that your chest hurts as much as your stomach and you can't choose which to soothe first. No. We don't understand it. What we really do understand or try to at least, is the fear that creeps up expecting the departure of that source of happiness. That's all.

But how connected, dear readers are our opposite emotions. Well then, should you find it in your heart to forgive this author for inconsistencies and contradictions, do so. For I too, am just a set of puzzle pieces put together haphazardly. And with grace of course. 

On the supposedly brighter side though, Mr. Subject of All My Poetry did mention what a privilege it is to be sustained by grace when strength ran out. so here i am, writing, starting again a practice I postponed for months now, exercising gratitude, trying to get out of my imposter cage and and stop looking for seepage signs in my otherwise stable structure. 

Because truly, what a privilege it is to be stretched by opportunities that once felt out of reach, to be heard in rooms that once closed its doors upon you.