Laid Bare in Surrender
A poem by Julia R. DeStefano
Laid Bare in Surrender
There are things she never thought she’d say.
Twists and turns of her life
that made them just not possible.
She stopped wanting.
Somehow, it became safer not to want.
Because every time she did, they went away.
Away into a box labeled Maybe Never,
though the lid wouldn’t quite close.
The years continued to pass.
She remained steadfast, unchanging.
Her feet firmly grounded
despite storms of come what may.
Until she found herself by the ocean one summer night.
Salt air at her face, his warm breath on her neck.
Tumbling-out-of-her confessions.
Overdue, like her.
To tell him in her own way:
“I want you to make me complete in life.
A different kind of complete.
Lay me bare in surrender.”
Or in a simpler way, “It’s always been you.”
Because there’s been a tick, tick of a clock
only she can hear,
though she never thought she would.
Silences full of emptinesses
that drag on and on
since the universe decided to reshuffle the deck on her.
Smother her in heaviness.
Enough to make her rethink her world.
Reimagine her place in it.
So afraid had she been to let herself want,
let alone entertain the thought.
But how freeing it was to speak of it!
Oh, how it humanized her,
even if she had no idea what would come next
or even if it could come next.
Though she knew that for every intimacy,
a tower of silence could erupt in its place.
A risk she was willing to take
to stand in the fire of her truth.
Sand at her feet
like sands through the hourglass,
“so are the days of our lives.”
© Julia R. DeStefano
