On learning the language of my heart.

( A vulnerable reflection )

Photograph by Mohini

I’m learning to understand the language of my heart. It’s hurting. I can feel slow thumping throbs, swells of ocean waves that deflate in crashes at the shore of my chest. I breathe into each swell, allowing it, understanding that to curb a wave is impossible - sending its waters inside of my being would only deepen the pain by asking it to wait. 

What confuses me is that I can’t find a source. Where is this pain coming from? It feels today like it’s emerged from no-where. Parentless pain. 

It expands, exploring other parts of my body. A swollen stomach, trembling fingertips, aching wrists. All of these body parts allowing, just allowing the pain to present itself. What do you want to tell us? What do you want to tell me? 

For the moment, emptiness. 

This may be a mirror of the hollows in my heart, those parts of me that haven’t learnt to love yet. 

I am judgemental of these hollows, masking them with righteousness, rationalizing my lack of love, pretending. But I cannot. With all that I know and all that I learn, I don’t want holes to have room in me. I want to be so full of love that I am a cloud ever-ready to burst with dew drops of rainbow rain. Here too, it could be that I first need to allow what I truly feel before asking my caterpillars to be butterflies. 

First the rain, then the rainbow. 

Magical rainbows with magical realms. I wonder when I will be able to travel into them, when I might experience more than the spectrum of the seven that they offer to our eyes. When I might ride the nuances of their colours into boundless skies. 

Let me perceive all that I am. 

This is the phrase I’ve arrived at. A phrase that soothes and ignites. 

While I’ve been writing the pain has shifted. I can feel it in my arms, a tickling tightness that tells me things. I now know that what I feel is the weight of earthly life. But how can I begin to lose these pounds of flesh that are so sticky to my being? 

My tummy talks. I arrive at another answer. I’m being called to transform my fear, embody the life that’s in me, embrace my heart as a compass. I can’t yet imagine how, but I know I will.

mohini