weathering

I heard them, the researchers, they’d taken this word “weathering” and made it embodied

They spoke of weathering of the body, and the mind, how we are all weathered simply by

existing… How we by culture and socialisation are weathered like a rock beaten by waves

I thought about how I weathered you -

how the fear I hid from you and from myself weathered us, like waves crashing into everything we tried to build

how my principal in SS2 weathered me, with that slap, punishing me for a reality I had no

control over, making me subconsciously resolve to never let myself be stranded.

how my parents weathered me, with their complete loving openness, allowing me to have much

more than a glimpse of the exhaustion of the attempt to stay just a bit above poverty.

How with their completely truthful, honest love, they filled me and weathered me almost simultaneously

In loving you the way I knew how - the way I learned from the people who first loved me, so fully

and completely, I brought the cloud and the sun and made it rain…

That sunny rain, that mysterious event - as kids we imagined it was a lion giving birth, gorgeous and terrifying

I made it rain, sunny rain, my love bright and exciting, my fears heavy and exhausting…

I made it rain and weathered you, weathered us, wore us down…