Write Where You Are is a blog written by Kathryn Gustafson about books, life, food, and a little bit of everything
by Kathryn Gustafson
There were two voices:
One falling down
Into a long, dark
Hole.
The other echoing back
To white, empty
Air.
Then I realized: it was not two voices after all.
Just one. Just mine,
With nowhere to go,
But up and down
the deep well
inside of me.
by Kathryn Gustafson
There are things that might seem plain
About the box you think I’m in
Because of how I speak quietly
With a softness that could sound like timidity
And the way my questions form, sometimes,
Falling childlike at
the end of lines.
I don’t weigh the measure of my time
Against the world’s rigidities,
But it’s not because I have no fire.
In fact, I have my mother’s complicated ire,
Balanced by
My father’s chess games, admonitions,
And the words of a thousand books
That make a world within my head.
I’ve lived through my childhood horrors,
Met death inside the eyes of others’,
Held hands of people that I love, as they left this life forever.
I fight each day against a mind
That’s knotted as a tangled line
With a heart which has been shattered,
A resilience that is tested, battered.
It’s exhausting to admit:
How much loving people hurts.
(How many times do I remind myself what love is worth?)
So I watch and weigh the fire and the words.
To find the phrases that would win
the wars,
And lose the love.
Power to win.
Or chance to bloom?
A choice that no one would assume,
Is difficult.
But the gentle rebel in me knows.
That where things are burning,
Nothing can grow.
We put out fires
And forge the unexpected paths
Through the oldest mountains.
Do you ever stop to think about
How we overcome changes of space and time
Like a magic trick
That no one sees,
Or that everyone expects?
We take on new forms constantly,
And make it look like serenity itself
Like the most natural thing in the world.
Thank you to all the women who carry the health of an entire family on your back, sometimes with no acknowledgment for the way you have sacrificed your status, your body, the dreams of a younger self. Thank you, also, to those women who flaunt their intelligence and expertise in the workplace, who are not afraid to be called “bossy,” because they know they are simply leaders. These paths are seen as oppositions to one another, but they are not. They are both brave. Neither is understood fully by society. We choose one, the other, or some combination of both. There is rarely a situation wherein everyone understands our choices. We make them anyway.
Thank you for those who do things differently, to the warriors who never felt supported. Thank you to those who appear so very delicate on the outside, but who love more strongly than anyone else in the world.
Thank you to the mothers and the daughters and the friends who know exactly what words are needed to heal a broken heart. Thank you, friends, for the way you have taught and inspired all of us.
It drifted in twirling pathways
Of deep grey rain and golden sunbursts
On the mountains
–Your last autumn.
Anxious finches, the rustling light on leaves.
The world in memory. The world in preparation.
Only in Fall
Can the world be angled so differently.
Your eyes were a cerulean blue,
Like the sky,
Your last autumn.
I wonder what moments were focused in those lenses.
Crinkly-smile lines and warm sweater hugs?
The final leaf falls, in a sigh.
But now it is some other Fall,
And I see grays and golds
And blues
And you.
-Kathryn Gustafson, 2016
Write Where You Are | Books, Life, Food, a Little Bit of Everything 