Scrolling Facebook recently, I came upon this brilliant bit of medicine by John Roedel. Thank you, John, for this viral post. Deep bow to you. The world consents to the wisdom in these words.
Note: The art of this piece is in both the words and in their placement. Due to limitations I am experiencing in adding white space, please know that the semi-colon added at the end of a sentences invites you to pause, as if there were two line spaces at each ( ; ).
For more of John’s work visit https://www.johnroedel.com John Roedel, Writer, Poet, Storyteller.
my brain and
heart divorced;
a decade ago;
over who was
to blame about
how big of a mess
I have become;
eventually,
they couldn’t be
in the same room
with each other;
now my head and heart
share custody of me;
I stay with my brain
during the week;
and my heart
gets me on weekends;
they never speak to one another;
– instead, they give me
the same note to pass
to each other every week;
and their notes they
send to one another always
says the same thing:
“This is all your fault”;
on Sundays
my heart complains
about how my
head has let me down
in the past;
and on Wednesday
my head lists all
of the times my
heart has screwed
things up for me
in the future;
they blame each
other for the
state of my life;
there’s been a lot
of yelling – and crying;
so,
lately, I’ve been
spending a lot of
time with my gut;
who serves as my
unofficial therapist;
most nights, I sneak out of the
window in my ribcage;
and slide down my spine
and collapse on my
gut’s plush leather chair
that’s always open for me;
~ and I just sit sit sit sit
until the sun comes up;
last evening,
my gut asked me
if I was having a hard
time being caught
between my heart
and my head;
I nodded;
I said I didn’t know
if I could live with
either of them anymore;
“my heart is always sad about
something that happened yesterday
while my head is always worried
about something that may happen tomorrow,”
I lamented;
my gut squeezed my hand;
“I just can’t live with
my mistakes of the past
or my anxiety about the future,”
I sighed;
my gut smiled and said:
“in that case,
you should
go stay with your
lungs for a while,”
I was confused
– the look on my face gave it away;
“if you are exhausted about
your heart’s obsession with
the fixed past and your mind’s focus
on the uncertain future;
your lungs are the perfect place for you;
there is no yesterday in your lungs
there is no tomorrow there either
there is only now
there is only inhale
there is only exhale
there is only this moment;
there is only breath;
and in that breath
you can rest while your
heart and head work
their relationship out.”
this morning,
while my brain
was busy reading
tea leaves;
and while my
heart was staring
at old photographs;
I packed a little
bag and walked
to the door of
my lungs;
before I could even knock
she opened the door
with a smile and as
a gust of air embraced me
she said;
“what took you so long?”
~ John Roedel (johnroedel.com)
