When you feel something again after being starved from it for a long time, it's incredible and exhilarating. Maybe it's the first joke you laugh at after a bout of depression, or the first moment you get to sit down after a long day at work. Maybe it's the first time you cry about something after a decade of telling yourself you can't. They're the moments that make you feel alive.
I've gotten so many more of those moments over the past year or two. It's good to feel like you're unthawing.
Remembering How To Burn
Throughout the winter,
A cut log sat in the woodheap,
Growing colder, growing older,
Frozen in space and time,
Rime collecting in the cracks.
Inert, unfeeling, in the quiet.
Dead wood.
And then,
Crunching through the snow,
Footfalls heavier for the silence, you came.
And with warm mittens,
Picked it up, carried it home.
Brushed off the ice (it was so cold,)
And set it down to dry.
And with that patience,
Soon placed it in your hearth,
And used it, sending it alight
With a warmth it had never known before.
It warmed your hands, your room, your bed,
It gave you light, and in a sunbeam at dawn,
Rested, content, smoldering - purpose found.
I hope you feel something today that's been neglected until now.
