The Dark One Told Me This
by Elizabeth Vongvisith
She was fearfully voluptuous, bloody
as a shocking train wreck, like
the essences washed from the floor
of the abattoir at the end of the day.
And I read the story of my death
in Her lambent eye, read my own
passions and pain there
in the upturned palm She held out.
She told me, Child, there is no life
undimmed by tears, no road whose surface
isn’t sharp and jagged at times with stones
slashing your tender, hurting soles.
There is no misery I have not witnessed,
stored like an unholy gem in the human heart,
or else blindly tossed out for the wild winds to carry
like so many dust motes sparkling in sunlight.
There is breath after breath,
the motion of your body from moment
to moment, forward and ever in time
until the day you die, and beyond.
There is the rising from the earth
where your sore and battered body falls
after each tremendous blow,
after your eyes squeeze shut in agony, then slowly open.
There is that knowledge that sorrow
wears many faces, and that some of these
can be slapped into submission
or forgetfulness, while others cannot.
And if you find cause for despair in this,
you are missing the point:
when pain sticks its needle into you,
this is not My deathblow, or My curse;
it is My lesson to you, little one,
that the raging ocean has no power
and the glow of love has no shimmer
without that fine edge of darkness.
Do not fear suffering, She told me,
for My blessing to you is courage
which bursts forth in its thousand-petaled loveliness
from the raw stink of loss and betrayal.
Do not fear Me, She said, holding
the tip of Her sword at my breast,
for it is better to rush upon this blade now
than to shrink away from life, in fear.
And I hold Her gaze, and Her bloodstained hands
rest on my head in benediction,
and I have not thrown myself forward
upon the blade She holds at my heart.
