I am home when the beautiful song of my heart is at peace.
There is nothing loud, here, nothing beyond the birds and the rippling pools of shadow on brick.
I am just me, in all of my softness.
Me, in this beautiful place, home.
I have loved tenderly, here.
I will always love tenderly.
Peace.
It’s soft and it’s cool.
It’s free and it’s flowing.
And quiet. (Good heavens it’s quiet. I close my eyes for that one. Truly. I close my eyes.)
Peace.
It lives in the candle beside me; within this flame, still and perfect.
I drink tea alone—peace lives there.
And the wind, swaying green beyond the window: it stops me as I wander.
It brings me home.
Peace is the language that brings me home.
Peace.
It is such a beautiful thing.
And it’s funny. How long it has taken me to see its worth.
That I’ve been looking for it. That, always, it’s been mine.
If only I’d known that I needed it.
I needed it.
Peace. I need it, still.
The soft girl whispers in my ear.
I drift each cushion to the foot of the bed and carefully place it off to the side, as if it were made of precious, gold leaf.
I peel back the doona; the sight of a crisp sheet peeking out beyond its triangular puff will never cease to satisfy.
The world runs fast.
I run slow. Smooth. Deep.
Just the way I was made to run.
I see the pace of the world, I do not choose it.
I see me, now.
I choose me, now.
In a world of fire, I am the stream.
Peace.
My heart wants nothing more, my soul wants nothing less.
I am tired.
So tired of the saddest story: well meaning fighters, fighting for good, creating the worst kind of bad.
I am tired.
Of the battle.
I do not need you to fight for me,
and they do not need you to fight for them
because those of us who have been broken are the wisest of souls.
We do not need to be saved.
We need peace.
We all need
peace.
War is what we have.
For now.
Maybe I’m sitting in a tree, somewhere, looking down at it all. I’m sure my feet are dangling, and I’m probably whistling in harmony with the wind through the branches.
What do I see when I look down at my life? I see myself sitting quietly at a little white desk, typing away, visualising a peaceful version of myself up there.
Peaceful me would look down at the small children running circles around the house, see me wincing at the too many seconds of loud for comfort and she’d send a little caring my way. An invisible hug, maybe. Whatever I might need to soothe me.
She’d also look down and see me laughing to the point of holding my belly. The six-year-old. The most HILARIOUS trick anyone has ever played on me. He’s managed to pull it off, and I highly doubt he’ll be able to top such brilliance in both wit and execution again, but I’ll remain on guard, just in case. Peaceful me would know that’s the first time I’ve laughed like that in a long, long time.Then she’d send a great big smile my way.
Peaceful me would see the good and bad of it and whisper to me: it’s all good.
It’s all good.
The time for soft and quiet has come.
Rest.
Lay down the bones of sorrows past.
Yesterday is a hush,
no longer ringing her angry bell.
She knows it true.
The time for soft
and quiet
has come.
I walk the streets listening to music that makes me cry.
I suppose I will do this until I have made peace with my past and become all that I am in this moment forever onwards, but for now, this is me: and me feels achingly beautiful. Like snow.
To walk the streets in this way, releasing newly risen anger and pain, is the gasp for breath I’ve needed to take for so long. Was I holding my breath, all those years? What did I do with anger and sadness before I learned to tie them in a ribbon of apricot sun?
I am no different to the one who reads this. Each of us travel through childhood gathering scars we will carry for the rest of our lives, or at least until we face them. I am facing mine, now.
I am feeling the anger and the pain.
I am also feeling a greater love than I’ve ever known.
For the sweet little girl I was, and still am in many ways.
For the beautiful people who loved me. How they nurtured my softness, how they pained to see it tarnished by the hardness of the world.
This is the gentle home of me.
Please, come in, just the way you are.
I am here in the quiet, knowing I am home.
I am the same, in this place, as the windy trees
and the sunset that melts across the bay.
This quiet.
It is the porcelain wail of a newborn child, it is the aching
of a freshly broken heart.
I know it well.
I know this place of quiet so well.
Let the soft and delicate know me.
Let my life be cradled
by the warm arms
of peace.
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