“Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Is Not Breaking”
By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons
equals the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Including the insects. Times three.
Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief —
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.
There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.
Often, after an hour of Yoga, I look at myself in the mirror and see a good-looking woman. It is true. I have had my phases and stages, but at each one of them I’ve been told, “You’re a good-looking woman.”
I have believed this about me. I still do. At 5'10" in India, I’m tall. Good genes. Statuesque. Largely steady in weight. Able to pull off pretty much anything. Dark hair. Brown eyes. A sharp jaw. Jutty collarbones. A certain magnetism of the animal variety.
Does me saying that about myself make you uncomfortable?
I find that fascinating. We’re happy to drop a few million likes on a picture of someone good-looking, but the moment someone describes themselves that way, we get uncomfortable with the vanity.
So, let me try again.
Often, after an hour of Yoga, I look at myself in the mirror and see a good-looking woman. It is true. My body has carried its volume in neutron stars. It has loved and lost more times than it is able to keep score. It has housed a mind that is subject to violent bouts of anxiety. It has projected a smile when the weight it carried was collapsing in on itself. It has carried doubt and shame and guilt and worthlessness and made it all look pretty.
The gravity that affects each person is different. This is true too. That I stand isn’t because the force on my human body is mass times 9.8 metres per second squared.
I stand because each day, I try to. Perhaps you try, too.
And if I showed this to the world-the truth of being- would it garner a few million likes? If I take a picture of me, crumpled up and collapsing inward, do you think people will see?
