Show me how you get back up.
When life takes you down.
When you’re on the cursed bathroom floor.
Pressed hard against cold tiles.
Desperate and clutching.
How do you rise after the fall?
Reveal all your grit and glitter.
Tell me who you are by the curve of your lips as you speak the truth about yourself.
No choking back words you believe you can’t say.
I am here. Want them all. Every ounce of dark. Every pound of light.
Show me how you get back up.
When you think you cannot.
When life has broken you one too many times.
And all you want in the whole wide world is to quit.
How then, do you find the small red thread that pulls you back to your heart?
Makes you ache with every scratch and bruise.
Causes you to love violently and feel mercurial joy.
Tell me who you are by the cut of your swagger on the dance floor.
Let your hips speak the language of Gods.
Bring on the moves that make you blush. Want to groan. Run hands along your own body.
I would have all your feral. Cherish every moment of wild abandon.
Show me how you get back up.
The morning after the unspeakable has happened.
Your heart wrenched out of the ribbed cage of your chest.
Rendered speechless and hollow all at once.
Because life stole something precious from you.
And recovery doesn’t feel remotely possible.
How do you come back to yourself?
Slowly? In fits and starts? All at once?
Tell me who you are by the salt of your tears, streaking across your beautiful face.
Let loose the tsunami of grief you’re holding back behind clenched teeth and tight jaws.
I will bear witness to your ache. Stay by your side through the long dark night.
Show me how you get back up.
After you’ve failed. Miserably. For the 100th time.
When the monkeys in your mind are shrieking of impossibility, doom, and never ever.
Your head buried in hands, feeling the weight of unmet dreams.
Because you cannot seem to get what you want out of life.
Wonder if you are inherently flawed. Destined to desire what will not be.
How do you pick up the pieces?
Do you declare marshall law inside? Force all the soldiers into formation. Leap into battle once more.
Or have you found a gentler source of motivation?
Tell me who you are by the weight of your worries, measured on a scale.
Release them from the prison of your mind. Every unholy fear set out on parade.
I am there. On the sidewalk. Cheering you on. Because you know, and I know, this is the only way to get free.
Show me how you get back up.
When the world is crumbling around you.
When it seems as if everything and everyone have lost their minds.
And you quake with fear for the future. For your children’s children.
How you see the broken and cannot fix it. No matter how hard you try.
Some violence here. Destruction over there. An unending dance of death unfolding.
What helps you hold onto yourself in the face of it all? Keep showing up day by day.
How do you handle the hard pit of anger roiling in your belly?
Tell me who you are by the primal of your screams. Reverberating across the planet.
Put all your rage in your mouth and howl it into the night.
I will join you. Lips open. Sound echoing beside you. Together, we will be seen.
Show me how you get back up.
Show me how you do not let this life pull you under.
Below the waterline. Forever.
Help me remember. And I will be your mirror when you, too, forget.
We need each other. Especially in the darkness.
Small pinpricks of light guiding the way forward.
Show me how you get back up.
Show me your power and prowess. Your lioness. Her staunch refusal to be denied.
I will join your pride.
Together, we are unstoppable.
Show me how you get back up.
Show me your grace and love. Your sweetness. Curled up tight against your heart.
How you never let it go. Despite the heartbreaking work of being human.
I will bless you for the vulnerability. Share my own soft spots.
Together, we can heal what aches in us.
Show me how you get back up.
Show me your beauty and truth. The all of the all of it. Strung together like beads of light on dandelion spines.
I will bare my soul to you. In all its dark, wondrous sparkle.
Together, we can retrieve ourselves from the land of numbness and sleepwalking.
Show me how you get back up.
And together, we will rise. Stomp across the face of the world.
Carrying love in our chests. Truth on our lips.
Light in our eyes. Blessings in our hands.
We are the warriors we were always meant to be.
Together, we can save ourselves and this one precious world we’ve been given.
previously published on The Urban Howl, December 2016
ABOUT SHANNON CROSSMAN