I buried it
Just for you
Tucked it away
Where no one had a clue
Pretended to be fine
Let you pretend to be divine
And buried myself with your secret
Anew
I buried it
So very deep
It put me in a kind of
Emotional sleep
I never prayed
Or let it be known
I kept your secret
As if a debt on loan
I’m digging up the grave now
Where your secret is buried
Using a shovel
Where the decomposed got carried
And airing out the tomb
Where your ugly made me mummy
Finding voice
Let my story count for something
And resurrect it
Just for me
Untucked from the safe storage
Peeled back ever so gently
No pretend or pretense any more
Your feigned divinity, now lore
And I will rise up out of the grave
{of the secret I buried}
I will rise up
once
more.
cjz
12:21 am
11/23/2020
I wrote a grand total of three poems last year. One rhyme was a silly little ditty about a nose strip falling off the bridge of my nose in my week-long attempt to stop snoring. I wrote it to make my husband laugh.
Another, a spring poem, is entitled ‘Fall from Grace’. I wrote it to make a dear friend feel heard and to affirm her beautiful redemption story. It brought us both healing.
The writing of this poem came out of nowhere in the Fall, 2020. As you might guess, I wrote it for me. It just stumbled from my heart onto the page.
Many times as I share my stories, I question myself. I question my worth, my byline, (finding your voice after abuse) and I wonder if my writings are going out into the great big void of the internet or if they are reaching real people with real lives like mine.
I daydream about crawling back into a silence where my voice was buried, I am muted once again and grave clothes wrap me tightly — almost cozy — in my coffin of isolation for one.
Abuse survivors who speak out are rarely met with enthusiasm. There is a natural inclination, even in the survivor community, to ‘supernaturally’ bear silent shame than to voice the truly shameful acts another committed against us. Secrets get buried six feet deep and in that place our inner dialogue brings a kind of death.
But certainly, healing doesn’t come in the simple airing of our stories, though that can be a start. Healing doesn’t happen because we potty mouth our abusers and run their names amuck. Healing doesn’t wake us up one morning because we set the alarm to go off when we finally ‘found’ our lost voices. No.
Healing is a resurrection. It is rising up from the dead places. It is coming back to life after sin and abuse and dysfunction and addiction and shame put you in a grave. It is all things new— the old gone. Healing is to have your vocal chords mended that you might speak life to those still buried.
I would argue that Jesus Christ is the great Healer, the Resurrection and the Life. I wouldn’t have a story worth telling had He not reached into where the ‘decomposed got carried.’
Air out your tomb.
Dig out the grave.
Unwrap your mummy.
Rise up.
Rise up.
In Christ, run out of the grave.
The song Glorious Day by Passion Music became a sort of anthem to me in 2017. Listen here on youtube.