December 1st | What Happens When...

Reflections and a Poem.

For the first time, in a long time, a poem came to me. After years of distancing myself from poems, I let one find me on a night walk. I wanted to read it to you. Scroll down to the end of this post to listen.

What happens when
you’re born to people
who don’t know themselves
enough to know you…

Who can’t love themselves
enough to see us—once a part of them.

Once a piece of home.

What happens when the people you were born to have never touched the beginning or end of their suffering?

What happens to peace?
To possibility.
To the hearts of the pure.

Will we ever know what it’s like
to be held.
To be heard.
To be cared for.

What happens when the people we were born to have been on mute, on ice, cold, most of our days?

Focused on just surviving for the both of us.
For most of us, there is no healing.
There is only survival.
The getting to the next day, to get to the next day.

The Grandmothers to our mothers pray and pray and pray.

And yet, will there ever be a day when God picks up the phone and says hello?

What happens when we’re all lost?
How do we make it back to the path of hope?

Who will hold us when we’re all this scared?

What happens when the people you were born to can’t ever truly see you?

Does that mean we can never be truly human?

To be human is to know love.

But what happens when love gets lost on its way home to us?

What happens when we’re born to people who don’t love themselves enough to love us?