the Swell

I.

I am tearing in between. My heart feels as though it is shrinking. My mind is running off with itself.

I feel alone.

I feel, at times, that those closest to me are furthest away. I reach out to grasp the love that lingers—it dissipates as vapor.

Cure me of this isolation, this depth of emotion that threatens to consume me.

II.

My intellect knows that I am not alone; I am not drowning—

I am surfacing, emerging.

There is hope resting at the bottom of Pandora’s box.

So can I crawl inside and pull the lid over me?

III.

Yet I know that when we are given hope—we are to keep none for ourselves.

Hope dies locked up in a box.

We hold onto hope for a time but at some point, we must let go—we must set it free that it may spread itself out and accomplish that which it was conceived to do.

My hope is so heavy, so parturient, so vast—I think it is crushing me.

I want to somehow contain all that is seeping out from within me, but I know that I cannot be contained—lest I explode.

I feel myself swelling, bloating, stretching—at some point, I must cut myself open, reach out my hands to pour out that which writhes and proliferates within me…

With such a vulnerability and determination that something magnificent will have opportunity to take root and find birth.