Truth is yes, and no, and I don’t know.
It is the hardest claim to make, to say:
I’m telling the truth of it.
Because we cannot know, if we really are.
Truth is getting older, and being grateful
for all the greys, the aches, the pains
of still being alive.
Truth is: I do like who I am,
no matter how unfashionable it is to say so.
Truth is: I’ve never been fashionable; truth is
I used to wish I was. I don’t now.
Truth is: I love freedom of spirt, but truth
is also that free spirits are hard to live with.
Truth doesn’t care. Truth cares too much.
Truth cries and weeps all the time.
Truth can sound too much like anger, or self-pity,
it has no filter, it is uncomfortable in the moment,
only a comforter, after.
Truth is being scared, being brave, being exultant.
It can be exhausting, because truth keeps shouting
even when I’m not listening.
Truth fills notebook after notebook with mundane details
of this life I am trying to live as honestly as I can.
Truth is not factual. It is authentic. It is bare skin and a broken heart.
It is ritual and reality. It is ancient.
Truth is: I got distracted writing this, wandered off
into another poem, and then to research a workshop course
that I won’t commit to because, truth is, I have too much
other stuff calling my soul and my time, to offer myself
to teaching weeks and dream weeks for the whole nine months
it takes to birth another woman.
Besides, I’m liking the one I am.
Truth is trust. It is messy and contradictory,
Truth hurts: it is I can’t fit in one more thing,
not if I want to sleep. Truth is my ego
gets in the way.
Truth is my ego shrinks when I wish she’d scream.
Truth is I still like to dream,
and to dance and sing loudly and out of tune.
Truth is: eternity is finite, time may be elastic
but it snaps, eventually.
Truth is: sometimes the poems write themselves,
and sometimes they refuse to be written at all,
but it is never just words, it is heart-song.
Truth is soul-searching, soul-searing, soul-sharing.
Truth screams through our air, tears out her hair
because we’re not listening. Truth is hard to hear,
heavy to carry unspoken. It is the place we have to stand,
in the end, when everything else is broken.
~ ~ ~
