PINK PLASTIC GUITAR

Each year that goes by it is a surprise you are not with us.  As I talk to people about my story, my friends, how I lived into teenager-hood, you are there...and now you're not.  And I still don't know how to understand that.  Today I cry anew for you my old friend; my friend who wasn't allowed to get old.  You'll never make it into your 30's.  You're missing it--our kids, our new tattoos, our stupid mistakes, the arguments over rubbish new movies and music, and what constitutes a classic.  You would laugh at my jumble of an accent living over here in Scotland.  You would laugh that I, of all people, have become a yoga teacher--but I would have made you try it!  I would've seen you in a few weeks when I come back to visit the U.S., but now...I'll visit your mom, and we'll talk about missing you together.
I wish I would have shaken you; locked you away until you got ahold of you again.  I wish I would have really known how much you were slipping away into world's that should never be discovered.  I will not stand by ever again.  I will stomp my foot, I will rage, I will make them hate me because I won't leave them alone.  You will be the last I let slip without a full-out war.  We still miss you.  Still see you in the movies we watch.  Still think of you any time we see someone playing the drums.  You are here in spirit...but oh how we wish it was you in whole.

I scroll down my Facebook feed, and my chest constricts.  I see loved ones and friends on the opposite sides of walls, walls that are not being build and paid for by Mexico.  I try to breath, it comes in short, spasmatic gasps.  I wonder if this is what it felt like at the beginning of civil wars; beginning at civil unrest.  Families and friends and the masses torn apart over great and weighty things, things that are life changing and defining, felt deeply and in their bones, that feeling of being the only "right and true."  It aches--the weight of this feeling, this love, this hurt, this chasm of divide that is growing much wider than the Grand Canyon I once saw with my sisters....even us, my best most beloved, we are divided.  Tears stain and strain, and a small elephant sits gently, leaning with ever insistent pressure over my lungs.  I try and tear away my gaze, "stop reading," I tell myself, "stop listening....stop caring...distance yourself...." but I cannot rip it away.  It is everywhere felt, like a pen tipped with poison, writing over all my thoughts.  Trying to distract myself feels fake, and I feel trapped, the writing wringing my hands, the elephant growing.

I bring my focus to my mat...
Blocking out the sounds of the spewing from the wall
I breath in from my belly, feeling my chest trying to rise...
I remember my God,
Turning to look Him full in the face,
Allowing Him to bleed into the hurt, the uncertainty...
The elephant is not absent, but it is smaller than it was...

He is the giver of peace, and I find Him inside, speaking in a still small voice. Speaking into my soul, reminding me how to breath, reminding me how my stomach moves when I breath well, and how cool he designed my lungs, aren't they neat?  "Feel this," as I touch his side, his holes in his hands, "Being broken is a given in this world.  Being broken, it's hard work; breaking for others takes great courage, trust, love...these are always worth it, but never gentle."  My shaky salt breaths come ragged with tears, but I know He is true and right.  And even though I don't know what to do with these walls growing everywhere, with distrust and uncertainty in the most unlooked for place, I know where to go when the squeeze in the breath becomes too much.  I go to my mat--to find my breath and my God, the peace that passes understanding.