Permission to Fall Apart by Nina Erin Hofmeijer

Art by Liliana Kleiner

I grant you permission to fall apart.

here,

I will make you this nest

here,

I will tie your hair back

here,

I will wait with you

Your heart is a stone sunk to the bottom

of the bottom

Hot and cold

a dead thing, pulsating

a thing that cannot be

Let it be that.

Your skin is coming off,

peeling and sloughing around the

coarse string you’ve used to truss

yourself, to keep your old shape,

the one we all rely on

Cut it off; shed it all

The howl that is developing

in the subterranean pockets

of your grief,

that is swirling behind your name,

a sound that is a mouth in shock at its gaping

Release it

Here. Now.

Look in the mirror of my face

See what I see:

All that you broke was already broken

See what I see:

All that you shed was no longer yours

Your renewal is centuries old,

made of the shed pieces of the

winters of your ancestors

Your storm is the honest expression of the sun:

Turning seeds to crops, turned thresh turned dust

Explosions of stardust and the wind of creation;

We are what’s left after God fell apart

An excerpt from the girl god anthology, Inanna's Ascent: Reclaiming Female Power.

Nina Erin Hofmeijer is a writer, mother, healer and mostly-gentle truth-teller living in Eugene, OR.