The Edge You Carry With You

You know so very well the edge of darkness you have always carried with you.

You know so very well, your childhood legacy:

that particular, inherited sense of hurt, given to you so freely by the world you entered.

And you know too well by now

the body’s hesitation at the invitation to undo everything others seemed to want to make you learn.

But your edge of darkness has always made its own definition secretly as an edge of light

and the door you closed might, by its very nature be one just waiting to be leant against and opened.

And happiness might just be a single step away, on the other side of that next unhelpful and undeserving thought.

Your way home, understood now, not as an achievement, but as a giving up, a blessed undoing, an arrival in the body and a full rest in the give and take of the breath.

This living breathing body always waiting to greet you at the door, always prepared to give you the rest you need, always, no matter the long years away, still wanting you, to come home.

‘The Edge You Carry With You’, by David Whyte