Contemplative

Contemplative

I suddenly feel incapable
of expressing my experience
in words.
There is no flow
from mind
to hand, to pen
to ink, to paper;
perhaps that’s because this is a journey of the soul.

All inspiration has
stopped;
my implement of communication
exploded in my pocket without my knowing
and it’s stuck, sticky, staining
the space in my heart; I try to wipe it away
to scrub and clear and clean and pass
the requisite
of furious, crushing; provocative growth.
I have sunken to the bottom of this tar-like medium.

My hands are stained
I spread it everywhere –
like ink blots meant to be deciphered
I can’t seem to
articulate.
This expedition lacks structure;
open to interpretation
solidified with perspective only to reveal quicksand of thought.

Joy springs from jagged shattered pieces; jagged shattered pieces leak from peace. I
have been sheared.

My knees are laden with crystallized salt
powdery specks of white; contrast on my smooth brown skin. My bowing head heavy
like a
bag of broken sea shells;
perhaps if I can fit the pieces together
It’ll form an unambiguous depiction of
this voyage.
I have not been to the beach.

My feet are stained in the decomposed
flesh of the Earth;
the cycle from birth to death and back again is apparent
with infancy tickling my toes and rootedness poking at my arches. I have bruises from
trampling on my spirit’s adolescence.

The immaterial, intangible, unexplainable
detonates, drowns, drives, and devolves;
the transmission of my Earth bound passage onto paper.

"This poem was written at a very interesting time in my life. I felt like I couldn’t write about my experiences anymore, which was strange because most of my expression was in poetry format or journaling. It was the transitional moment between drowning in my mental health challenges and finding new ground. The journey felt wobbly and without structure, but that was only because it was different. It was a landscape I had yet to traverse, but that I was in the middle of traveling. I felt beaten and broken, but I knew it was momentary and it would get better as long as I kept on moving forward."
Brooke Bridges
Author

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