Hello, Beautiful Pain

Sometimes descent happens in the most unexpected ways: in the clink of a glass in an unfamiliar place, in the curious gaze of a stranger, in an unexpected “Schön, dass du da bist” spoken by someone kind and exciting.

And suddenly, words begin banging against you, begging to be born.

You find yourself descending into a pitch-black sphere, unable to tell whether you are free-falling or rising. It does not matter. Everything is present. You touch every second of the decades that made you. Every part of you is held in space and acknowledged, as though you were a flower opening slowly, petal by petal.

Somewhere in that darkness, you meet the pain that has carried your shape for years. You sit beside it long enough to hear what it has been trying to say.

Hello, beautiful pain.

I see you have not changed much.

Even as I turn to walk away,

my soul leans closer.

Why do you detain me so?

My heart still bleeds.

My mind still aches.

Your familiarity pulls me in

like an old house

that remembers my footsteps.

I watch

as you close the door behind me.

Here.

Take the key.

Throw it into the abyss.

This time, I have decided to stay.

Swallow me whole.

Extinguish my light.

Pull me beneath the place

where breath answers to my name.

I surrender my weight to you.

In your stillness,

in your dark,

I will remain.

Perhaps, with time,

we will understand each other.

I descend slowly

through wounds hardened into strength,

through griefs I taught to sit quietly,

toward the child

who learned to survive through silence.

I go deeper,

to where sky sinks into ocean

and the body forgets

the difference between drowning

and returning.

There, I find you waiting.

Ancient.

Heavy with all I left untouched.

You carry the farewells

that never left my mouth,

the screams turned inward,

the selves I abandoned

along the way.

Now I understand.

You were never asking me to suffer.
You were asking to be witnessed.

You have waited here

for me to look at you.

Come closer, beautiful pain.

Sit beside me.

Tell me what happened

before I taught you silence.

Tell me whose hands shaped you,

whose absence fed you,

whose voice entered you

until it sounded like mine.

I will listen.

I am tired

of mistaking exile for freedom.

Stay until you have spoken.

Then, when there is nothing left between us but recognition,

I will rise

and find the door.

Perhaps the key

was never thrown far enough.

Perhaps it has been resting

in the dark beside us,

waiting for my hand.

And you?

You will become

what all pain longs to become

when it has finally been held:

a memory

that no longer bleeds.