sitting with pain

on the therapeutic value of life modelling

Photo by Nicolas Ladino Silva on Unsplash

Sitting with pain,

flowers behind my head

in a pose that isn't, actually, that bad


in front of 7 middle-aged women,

carving out and scooping back time

after births, stretch-marks, wrinkles, & finding

they could, after all, stand their husbands enough for a weekend away.


& there's me –

figure-molding blue velvet dress,

blown-glass necklace with hints of marijuana

an innocent blue flower

at its centre, given to me by my beloved

and I think about how, when I want to loop my love out to him,

and stellar-burst my heart right into his,

I stop myself, and bring it back, because it

might not be welcome.


Just as my shouts of “Look at this, Dad!”

were an assault on

a tracksuited man on a sofa

who wanted only to be left alone

to digest his disgust with life.


(& tomorrow I will see that I can, in fact,

let the burst come into me,

not out of a holding back,

but out of love –

enough for him, too).


But in the class, sitting,

I see none of this yet.

The strands of that process

are still tied up black, harsh & useless

in my throat & stomach

like glass from too many broken vows.


I sit with it: the pain


By the end of the session

it has turned from black glass

to coral, floating in the light

that just reaches the top of the sea.