Kneading The Aches.

Words, As Fruit. #23

I have this thing I say about the page. I say that the page asks for nothing but accepts everything. The page is empty space, and space for emptying and I, as the writer, in order to work with the page, have to be willing to pour, and to empty, and give to the page what it is so open and ready to receive. But so often I am not open, not ready and/or willing. So often I come to the page anxious and hesitant, wanting to give something I don’t have, or questioning whether or not what I have is enough to give. And then, there are times I come wanting to give one thing but another thing comes tumbling out. This is when the page becomes a scary place, a “ready or not, here we come” place where honesty and truth comes to find you…

Years ago, I shared with someone that I didn’t want to write because, I said, “I do not want to write from where I am.” At the time I was trying to find my way through heartbreak and the only words that came pouring were those filled with ache, and I didn’t want to ache. I wanted comfort, I wanted peace, I wanted relief, I wanted joy. I wanted to pour words that would gather me, wrap themselves around me, hold all that felt broken within me and, somehow, make me whole again.

Sometimes the aches need our kneading; need our pouring and our touch. A soft and tender, deliberate working. It’s how we soften. It’s how we make peace. It’s how we rise, after falling. It’s how we find our wholeness, again.

sometimes you'll write from the aches. 
a place where rivers are cried and the salt from tears exfoliates, and irritates, and then, purifies the skin. 

sometimes you'll write from empty. 
a place where the sound of a pens’ stroke echoes, and the quiet screams, in a hollowed pitch, are anointed by the juices of fruits dripping with honey pure enough to make the bitter sweet.

sometimes you'll write from longing.
a place where words are wrapped in shrouds of conjuring, weaved by faith’s gripping, trying to hold tight to remaining hopes and dreams.

sometimes you'll write from love.
a place where syllables flow in currents bobbing with soft vowels, punctuation resting on easy breaths, gently met by ethereal lines of a hearts’ pouring. 

sometimes you'll write from paradise.
a place where each word is pursued like a breeze in heat and copper skin by the sun in a noon sky. 

sometimes you'll write from the in-between.
a place where words fall like darkness at dawn and ascend like light at sunrise. 

sometimes you'll write from ashes. 
a place where the soul’s weight, released onto paper scraps, lays consumed, engulfed in smoke, and dissolves into baptized air.

sometimes you'll write from harmony. 
a place where words come cascading like notes, tracing thoughts, emotion and feeling, laid down like supple bodies wrapped around sultry melodies.

you will write from many places.
sometimes fluidly, sometimes forcefully, sometimes in disdain and uncertainty. 
but almost always, if you write, from the words will come a kind of healing. 
and so then, what you have written is remedy, balm, and salve.