140 Days

May came and time stopped, Time stood still;hours turned to days and days to months, And in between the emotions, Tears turned into rage, Fear into courage, And fire into ashes.

90 days turned into a 100 And a 100 into 140. Numbers are like inked memories, We walk alongside the numbers, Clenching onto them. Like a cold breeze at the break of winter, Like a ray of sunshine through a creak, Numbers remind us of each and every passing sunset since May, Not a single one passed by without a tear shed or a prayer uttered, Not a single one passed by without us crumbling.

Yet We're still here! A Hundred and Fourty Days later, We're still here. Surviving, hand in hand with our miseries, hand in hand with each other, Through the wilderness, beneath the shadow of the yearning hills, We're still here.

A dark fall day in late September, A cold Thursday afternoon, A long and haunting mark of a Hundred and Fourty days, I go dim for a moment then turn to the skies above with a treacherous thought; "We're still here and we aren't going anywhere. We will string together our instruments of grief and play them as we venture through the rocks" Our spirits will continue to rise up in this darkness, In the darkness of the number 140, Light will lead us ahead, "For we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed." (2 Corinthians 4:7-9)

For we know; "It's more than bones. It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse. It's more than the beating of the single heart." (Witchery of Living, Mary Oliver)

A 140 days; Of every attribute of strength, resilience and courage. A 140 days of shelling, A 140 days of deceit, A 140 days and yet We're still here.