Dear Beloved

                                                                            by Rebeccah Laughlin
 
My homework is to be the very small terrified girl crouching on the dock with my arms wrapped around my knees while twelve or so Chinese men dressed all in black crowd over me shouting horrible things about me at me. To feel my terror and cry out "You are black. You are black not white. You have a black heart" again and again and let the feelings come up.

To know that my mother had a black heart. I wanted her to have white one; I wanted her to love me. To feel my pain under my terror. To know the terror was real; it is not a lie. My mother hated my rabbit girl's soft waiting trust.

Holding my pain to go to the healing priestess knowing that I was eviscerated by my mother: my rabbit girl was torn to pieces every day. To feel my blood, the strips of rabbit, on my face warm and bleeding, torn and broken.

I am doing this out loud, in tears. I am going under the fear to my pain, to my rabbit girl. I am knowing that my mother had a black heart. The truth. And I am the rabbit with soft open heart.

***

Dear Beloved

I am spent
weeped to the bone
knowing my mother had a black heart

Knowing that You know
I have not been lying about how she treated me I having been lying to myself about her heart

I did not want her to have a black heart I did not want her eviscerating me every day to add up to killing

You kept coming to me
reviving, restoring, renaming
refashioning

now You bring me
to my true terror
me torn and bloodied

"You are black not white"
I see her black heart
I do not hold myself back

from knowing she had no love
I speak my long held words
I cry them from my heart

at last I am with your Priestess
I can feel her hands
tenderly laying my flesh

back on my bone
smoothing the tearing
mending the bleeding

my coat is soft and warm
my heart is beating open
I am no lie

she had a black heart

****

I speak deep in terror
from my darkest heart
the very words
so long waiting
to find life

always in me
outside my courage
beyond my tongue
not on it's tip
not at my edge

you are black
not white
leap from my mouth
trumpet loud
my voice

un-lie-ing my soul
darkness into
light vanquishes
Chinese men in black
dark mother mine

my body springs
awake reblooded
alive by mouth
in-breathed
I move

my feet hands
legs and arms
to find myself
re-fleshed
my rabbit girl

I am

****
I sit at her feet
me all of sixty five
she covers my body
with bloody strips
asks me

may I lay them on your head
"yes" I say
thinking will I suffocate
she lays the bands
down across my face

my eyes take in
their bloodied backs
my nose the hot
iron smell of kill
I touch them

feel them warm
on my cheeks
softness in my fingers
brown and gold
white and cream

I am a girl
three years old
teeth showing
smile warming
my face

I feel Her hands
my first feel of
Mother
on my skin
my rabbit fur

***
quiet rabbit self
sits out the wet
whiskers rain dropped
ears lie back along my fur
paws press against my breast

heart generates heat
passion spills into body
dissolution of defenses
quivering with wait
alive to to be known

what's coming
home to me
to feel and enter
what's opening
out of waiting
***

it's so amazing
we can word ourselves
out of lies into true

we can trust Him
to work in us
when we agree

to
work
too

it's so amazing
we can open into love
when we speak

our fears and wounds
our darkness
when we agree

to
work
too

it's so amazing
we can live alive
breathing water

have our being
be our childs
when we agree

to
work
too

***

there is no grief
that cannot be born
into new

there is no grief
that cannot bring
me to heart

there is no grief
that He will not
feel of mine

there is no grief
tell me true
make me smile

into love

***
I am not leaving

we are in a black and cavernous building the fire is huge red hot and smoking the floors are shaking underfoot walls are falling down around

You say to me
"you better go on"
I'm stunned and hurt
heartaching weak

grief swooning
raw wounded
bleeding with desire
I am Your girl

I want to stay by You
be with You live and die
with You not "go on"
when things go wrong

when I fall into pain
dark mother wound
not go from You to shame
not suffer world assault

to break me into tiny nameless
pieces I want to be by You
next You when I'm in trouble
when things get hot and hurting

this time the next I am staying
I'm feeling pain not leaving
I'm letting every wall break down
tumble my defenses to the ground

surrender me to staying

***
stay with me
there is nothing
more I want

be with me
and teach me
to be with child

be with child
with me
growing whole

stay with me
beloved
in my arms

be with me
next my heart
two making one

be with child
with me
coming full term

stay with me
soul's heart
no more to part