Adagio for Pain

(Played to Samuel Barber’s adagio for strings) 

It enters without notice,

like twilight stretching

Across sunny fields,

turning laughter into echoes.

Its touch, unseen,

etches lines into memory—

Happier days marred and scarred. 

We run, before we understand.

Small hearts learn the art of hiding,

of painting over a canvass that feels 

too sharp,

too wide,

too much.

Pain stains our past

with hues we do not choose.

The hand holding the brush

is all wrong,

and its grip is suffocating.

Rather than face it

we color around it.

We spend our lives painting

over the grays, covering up the darkness

with veils of light.

But the brush tells a tale

that cannot be washed away. 

For the pain waits— It always waits,

Underneath a thin coat of forced pleasantries.

It seeps beneath the drawings we hide away

And settles into the blank spaces we aim to fill.

And yet,

in the dark swatches where no light escapes,

we glimpse a strange truth:

We love the songs that make us weep,

the stories that pierce our soul,

and the paintings that break our heart.

Pain,

held in the arms of resistance,

is suffering.

Pain,

held in the arms of acceptance,

is forgiveness.

What if we stopped painting over our mistakes?

What if we displayed them on the wall instead,

their happy little accidents adding nuance to life?

What if we held pain

like a crying child—

not asking why it came,

but letting it be?

Pain is not personal.

It is the rain, falling on all.

To fight it is to drown,

but to let it soak in

is to grow.