Alex C. Eisenberg
A time will come when everything you held
with tender reverence or wild love
will turn on you—grow great gnashing teeth
and attack your bleeding broken heart.
You will want to fly away with every fiber
or dig in your heals and fight
with all sleight, cleverness and might,
as you have each time before.
Stop a moment though and look around.
Nearby there will be an opening.
It won’t look like the easy exit you had hoped for.
In fact it will be in the exact shape
of what you feared the most.
But a voice from within it will speak to you
whispering sweet darkness against your ear.
This is your invitation to enter;
to neither battle, nor flee, but to face.
And I’ll tell you now:
whether you enter this portal or no
the hungry mouths will follow you
snapping their invisible jaws against your back
shredding the shield of skin you’ve hidden in.
But it is only inside—in choosing
the pitch and aloneness of this abyss—
that you can finally learn
how to feed these enraged and insatiable beasts
who crave nothing less than your complete surrender
into the cavern of your greatest wound
instead of running away again
instead of being consumed.
***
Alex C. Eisenberg (she/her) is a child of the Pacific Northwest. Her writing is rooted in these wonderful landscapes and attempts to honor and reflect them. Her first chapbook “Holy Ground”, a tribute to the sacred lands of Snoqualmie Valley, won the Black Dog Arts Coalition Prize. Alex currently lives with her partner, their 5 cats, and an ever-changing number of chickens in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains. To read more of her work, go to alexandriaceisenberg.wordpress.com.