Here She Is
by Justyna Cyrankiewicz
Here she is.
I am still finding the vocabulary to describe the changes I am currently going through. Engaging in deep soul-work for a couple of years now, work that has brought both upheaval and soothing to my life, I no longer perceive the world, or my place in it, in the way I did just a few months ago. I keep changing. Being is probably the most helpful word here—and one to which I keep returning.
I moved back to my home country of Poland from Portugal just before Christmas, to support my parents, as my father’s body is claimed by cancer. After rupturing through his bones, the cancer is now turning his once-bright mind dark; on his scans, spots appear as shadowy voids across brain tissue.
My parents have a small farm with three horses (and a foal born on Valentine’s Day), a goat and her baby (born on the Spring Equinox), dogs, cats, chickens, peacocks, geese, ducks, guinea pigs, and a snake. The house is nestled in the forest, surrounded by fields. This chapter of my life offers an opportunity for me to relieve some of their workload, and re-weave my relationship with them.
Through many misunderstandings, we’ve grown distant. Words have come between us too often, but when I drive my dad to the hospital to receive his treatments these days, our hearts talk to each other. There is ease between us now.
For the time being, life feels as if being painted in smaller, intimate strokes. I’ve recently gone through a viscerally painful separation with my partner, carrying many lessons, as such life-altering events do. I’m still in the classroom of heartbreak, still doing my homework.
My grandma also lives with us, she’s always been my best friend and role model. When I think of her, I think of her hands—wrinkled and crooked from years of holding; a nurse, mother, wife, aunt, sister, and grandma. Boundless love is their only language. With these hands, she gently, eagerly reaches for a piece of dark chocolate I offer her each day. “You bear sweetness,” she tells me. And in exchange, she tells me stories, tales that spill from her house of memory like winter-worn bodies streaming out into the first full day of spring sunshine. I drink each one.
It’s all about holding nothing, really. Releasing, little by little, all the burdens we carry. I’m learning I don’t need to hold anything to feel abundant, or safe. The impulse to grasp is precisely what evokes the feeling of lack.
Learning to give from a place of overflow, not depletion—true giving is not so much an act, it’s a state of being.
Thank you for receiving this poem from my tender heart at this profound time.
there are countless examples of abundance in the universe
I remain underwater
these days, submerged.
I have used up
my strength, it seems, and all
I have left—the simplest and smallest
kind of quietness amidst
the raging storm.
I close my eyes
retreat into myself, deep, deep,
into the darkness where
nothing and nobody
can find me, not even
myself.
It is safe and warm and I wish to
stay there. But life was not made to
hide from.
I wanted to build
a bird feeder and mount it
to my window so I could
share food and in turn,
be offered small instances
of life-throbbing presence throughout my days.
There are countless examples
of abundance in the universe, I read.
The stars, countless,
The waves, innumerable.
The sips of air through the mouth, into the lungs,
along the veins and arteries, animating
the body—unlimited.
If I tried, I could never
count the many leaves
on a single tree, let alone
on the forest’s head. I brush
my gaze through and I
feel rich.
Another thing
that knows no limit, even
if it brings us to ours,
is love.
Mine has been
stretched these days to home
within it terminal illness,
old age with its merciless rights,
un-friending,
un-holding,
un-familiarizing,
and I also know there is no
greater courage and necessity
than love—giving it
receiving it, naming it.
Just like my grandma
teaching me to knit
a sweater in which to wrap my
shivering-still body, telling me
my tiny meager knitted square is
w o n d e r f u l.
So I spell it out,
across the vastness of skies:
the bright stars, the falling stars,
Jupiter and Pluto, the supernovas,
black holes—my language
of choice.
If you look up, you will know:
there are countless examples
of abundance in the universe.
I write about simple things for complicated minds. My weekly letters are dedicated to the practice of inwardness. Through it, we get to explore our tender relationship with the world, the wonders of dailiness, and the changing nature of life.
Read more on Justyna’s Substack
