You traced the history

then the geography

                                     of grief

in your body,

one crystallized fear at a time.

You listened,

made a covenant with stillness,

took your vow of silence.

And there they were:

fears beckoning,

asking to be moved,

to be undone,

to be unshaped

from rock to river,

asking for a promise

of safe passageway.

And the way kept appearing,

unhurried, forming a riverbed

with its arms open,

waiting,

saying,

Come flow through here.

I know you by heart.

The miraculous way

we are made,

yet we forget 

that the anatomy of fear

was built upon

decades,

centuries

of inherited grief.

However long as it may take

to undo,

to return,

there are times—

there are times

when the terror

fades, when healing is

sudden and complete.

I have heard in such moments,

in certain rooms,

even science kneels

without knowing

what it kneels before.