36 Views of SF: 25. The Wound Comes to Life
July 1, 2018

(after seeing Soft Power by David Henry Hwang)

Is the wound forgettable?
Is it deniable?
Does a festering sore
Slowly go unviable?

Do wounds heal without our attention?
Do they let go, are they friable?
Does a smoldering fire
Simply become deniable?

You think you’re done
Healing your scars.
You’ve done your therapy.
You wrote your memoirs.

You’ve told yourself your narrative.
You think you understand.
You’ll bear your pain with grace.
Or so your ego planned.

But all wounds are connected
We are all wound-siblings-conjoined.
When the wound comes to life
Your happiness is purloined.

Wounds come to life
When the light starts shining.
The wound makers cannot hide –
So they start their dark designing.

They design their defenses.
They put up their wall.
They rely on their hard power
Love takes a hard and nasty fall.

Tough and soft love
fall into the wound.
Tough love can’t exist here.
Soft love has been marooned.

All wounds are wounds of love, though
So love is the only out.
We must rely on love’s soft power
To open our wound’s redoubt.

How ironic – we’ve always doubted love’s power.
And our problems now seem insurmountable.
But when all other options are monstrous, crude and awful –
We must make our love redoubtable.

Love has never been applied on this scale
The scale of our wounds is unimaginable.
We will have to love as never before
And do things we deemed undoable.

Healing will come with our refusal
To being caught in anger, paranoia and hate.
Break silence, make peace, make love.
Our wounds are not our fate.

 

Blog pairing: Valentine’s Day, Lovingkindness and Cambodian Trauma

© 2018, Ravi Chandra. All rights reserved.

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