Forgive.

day four.

You’re right, I really don’t want to talk about it. I’ve realized I hardly ever write on forgiveness, and maybe that’s because grief is actually an easier thing to loop through.

Forgiveness involves other people, when grief can be with others or alone.

Forgiveness, even if it’s quietly in our own hearts, connects us to people who hurt us, or us to those we’ve hurt.

But it’s still a form of medicine in the world. That’s the difficult part, and it’s not easy medicine to harvest.

Photo by NADER AYMAN on Unsplash

forgive.

They say that forgiveness is freedom,
or they say we should forgive and forget, 
and either way, we must decide what
kind of medicine we are looking for
in this short life.

Someone once harmed you, harmed
me, we once harmed one another, and
to get to that field Rumi writes about,
the one in which we can lay down
in flowers and rest, we must face
all the realities of what’s happened
and call ourselves and each other home.

What medicine is needed here?
I give you a glass of water to drink,
you light the sage and smudge my body,
and we cry in remembrance, hoping for
the future to be better than the past.

Forgive yourself, forgive me, forgive the gods,
forgive us, and take into yourself the medicine 
that was waiting beneath the surface 
of the grief, the longing, the anger. 

Breathe in this medicine now,
clear lungs, lighter heart, still not
totally trusting but not totally
closed like a cage, either- just
you, us, fully human, fully known.