this is the place where i rest, by katharine love
learning how
to stop
blowing up
my life
from
the inside
out
has been a
challenge
for me
beginning with
my arrival,
no body
there
to soften
my fall
so i
fell head
first
into food,
always looking
for comfort
always
looking for faster
and faster
ways
to stop feeling
so much
pain.
i knew
that marrying
him
was a sin
against
myself but i,
so desperate
for a tribe
of little me’s
and
my family’s
“yes!”
failed to hear
my tiny timorous
voice that said
“no no no.”
beginning today,
after decades
of abasement,
i claim myself.
i choose myself
over the pain,
over the food,
over the disenchantment,
over the chaos.
finally, after what
feels like
five lifetimes
of self neglect
i said yes
to my own life,
one breath
at a time.
Katharine Love is a psychotherapist and poet living with her puppy Lucille Pearl in the bucolic town of Collingwood, Ontario.
Mary Ledvina is a healer who does many types of massage and energy work. She has been published in Art Journaling Magazine, Paragraph, and Seeding the Snow. She was the editor of Cellar Roots, EMU’s literary and arts magazine. She lives in a solar-powered house in Whitmore Lake, MI.