It's Still Life

13 of 27: Stillrift — The Liturgy Poem: Peace Earned from Ruin

Let It Become Weather

I. The Arrival
No trumpet. No epiphany.
Just the click of a lock after the last word leaves—
a silence so thick it tastes like blindness,
as dust settles into something
like horizon.
The wound scabs.
Stillrift arrives when the itch fades
into the patience of scars.

II. The Ceasefire
Not healing. Not victory.
A truce written in the body’s own hand: Enough.
The scars don’t fade—
they just run out of things to say.
The line between past and present
trembles with imbalance.

III. The Grounding
Kneel in the dirt.
Not to pray—
to prove the earth still answers.
You are half-rooted in cinders.
Love it anyway.
This is your first truth,
not your last.

Stillrift teaches:
love the planting more than the fruit.
Its shadow never fills the belly.

IV. The Revelation
Words dissolve.
Stillrift licks the salt they leave behind.
A word is never wrong—
it’s truth that blisters.
The tongue burns
where it once longed
to say I forgive.

V. The Agreement
You strap pain to your back
like a sleeping child—
it kicks, it drools.
You walk anyway.

Not toward dawn.
Not away from dark.
Just forward.
The only direction left
when every map has burned.

VI. The Leaning
When the wind comes,
let it press your spine
like a stranger’s palm.

No flinch.
No fury.
Just the almost-comfort
of knowing:
even this
will pass.

VII. The Naming
Stillrift. A compound word.
Still—as in even now.
Rift—as in what remains open.

Say it slow.
It tastes of salt and soil—
the colour of a wound
that finally learned to breathe,
a scar that sings
lullabies to itself.

VIII. The Argument
They shout.
You don’t shout back.

Progress.
Anger with no target.
The silence afterward
is the first brick
in a house you’ll live in.
Build it anyway.

IX. The Scars
Old wounds are poor historians.
They retell the story
with the facts all wrong.
They will never be silent—
but you can learn
to out-sing them.

X. The Hot Wind
Words dissolve like salt.
They sting where they land.
Let them.

Let unrest be your compass.
Let peace be your knife.
Let the colours mix in your throat
until you taste violets.

XI. The Peace
Peace is not a ceasefire.
It’s knowing where to aim
the artillery.

Let it hurt.
Let it end.
Let it become the weather.

Stillrift is not the absence of pain—
but the presence of a self
who can outlast it.

And you do.
And you will.

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