Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
I hope there is a place
where nothing hurts.
Not heaven, necessarily,
with its impossible architecture
of gold and everlasting light.
Nothing so grand.
Just somewhere
the world has finally
stopped asking things of you.
Somewhere the morning
does not arrive
carrying yesterday
in its mouth.
Where there are no letters
waiting to be answered,
no difficult conversations
ripening in the silence,
no small domestic wars
in which everyone
has forgotten what they wanted
but remembers
who was wrong.
I hope there are no clocks.
Or if there are,
that they have lost
their appetite for time.
That the hours
lie down beside you
like old dogs
with nowhere else to be.
I hope you have your chair.
The good one,
with the familiar hollow
where your body
has taught the cushions
the shape of being home.
I hope Bing is there,
enormous and content,
his small, warm kingdom
established across your lap,
purring with the absolute authority
of a creature
who has never once
considered the meaning
of regret.
And on the television,
The Crossword Mysteries.
Another clue.
Another suspect.
Another impossible little question
that will be answered
before the credits roll.
Nothing important
left unresolved.
Nothing that follows you
into the next room.
I hope there is spaghetti.
A great brown bowl of it,
the way you liked it,
beneath a snowfall
of entirely too much cheese.
And nobody tells you
it's too much.
Nobody asks
whether you ought to have less.
Nobody needs anything
while you're eating.
The telephone does not ring.
The doorbell
has forgotten its purpose.
There is no one
whose happiness
depends upon
the particular arrangement
of your words.
No one else's sorrow
to carry carefully
through the afternoon.
No one else's anger
to make sense of.
No problem
waiting to become yours.
Only the quiet
and the television
and the cat
and the extraordinary luxury
of being left
in peace.
I have been thinking
about how much of a life
we spend
on things that will not matter
when it is over.
The arguments
we polished
until they shone
more brightly than the love
beneath them.
The little victories
that cost us
whole years of tenderness.
The stubborn, terrible need
to be understood
by people
who were just as desperate
to be understood
themselves.
All those words.
All those wounded silences.
The explanations
that grew more complicated
each time we tried
to make them clear.
The distances
we built
one misunderstanding
at a time,
until we could no longer see
the people
standing on the other side.
How fiercely
we defended
our versions of the truth.
How carefully
we kept account
of what was owed.
How many ordinary evenings
we surrendered
to the belief
that being right
might somehow
make us whole.
And now—
what does any of it weigh?
What becomes
of an argument
when one of its voices
has gone quiet?
Where does resentment go
when there is no longer
a door
through which an apology
might enter?
What use is the last word
when there is no one left
to hear it?
I don't mean
that nothing mattered.
It did.
The hurt was real.
The love was real.
The things we could not mend
were real.
And there are wounds
that do not close
simply because
the hands that made them
have grown still.
But I look at the years
and feel such sadness
for all the tenderness
we could not find
our way toward.
For the ordinary happiness
buried beneath
the extraordinary effort
of being human.
For the afternoons
that might have been gentle.
For the words
that might have been softer.
For the people
we might have been
to one another
if we had known
how little time
was ever ours.
I wonder
whether death
takes all that noise
away.
Whether the old grievances
lose their language.
Whether pride,
at last exhausted,
sets down its heavy coat
and discovers
there was never anyone
asking it to stand guard.
Whether every sharp
and frightened part of us
is finally permitted
to rest.
I hope so.
I hope there is no need
to explain yourself
where you are.
No impossible accounting
of every mistake.
No tribunal
of disappointed hearts.
No long procession
of all the moments
you might have chosen
differently.
I hope whatever peace is
does not require you
to earn it.
That it comes
without conditions,
without a list
of things to put right,
without asking you
to become someone
you never quite learned
how to be.
I hope it is as simple
as sunlight
moving slowly
across the carpet.
As the soft weight
of a sleeping cat.
As knowing
there is nowhere
you are expected
to go.
And perhaps
this is a selfish wish.
Perhaps I want
to imagine you happy
because the alternative
is another kind of sorrow
I cannot bear.
Perhaps I need
to believe
there is somewhere
beyond the reach
of all our unfinished things,
where nobody
has to spend eternity
trying to find
the right words.
Because I have
so many left.
Questions
that no longer
need answers
and yet
will always ache
with the shape of them.
Things I wish
I had understood.
Things I wish
you had.
Things I would say
differently now,
knowing how suddenly
a lifetime
can become
the past.
But I do not want
to bring them
to your door.
Not anymore.
If there is a door,
I hope it opens
onto a room
where the afternoon
is endless
and nothing terrible
has happened.
Where the cat
is making himself comfortable.
Where the spaghetti
is getting cold
because you've become
entirely absorbed
in solving
some ridiculous mystery.
Where there is
a familiar chair,
a little light
through the window,
and absolutely nothing
that needs to be done.
And if love
can reach you there,
I hope it arrives
without all the things
we tangled around it.
Without accusation.
Without expectation.
Without the terrible burden
of needing
to become something
other than what it was.
Just love.
The small, surviving part
that remains
when everything else
has fallen silent.
I hope it finds you
in the middle
of an ordinary afternoon.
I hope it sits beside you
without asking
for anything.
And I hope,
wherever you are,
you do not have
to think about
any of this.
Not the years.
Not the hurt.
Not the things
we could not change.
I hope you never have
to wonder
whether you were loved.
I hope you know.
And then
I hope you turn
back to your program,
scratch Bing
behind the ears,
take another forkful
of spaghetti,
and let the whole
unanswerable world
go on without you.
For once,
let there be nothing
you must do
about any of it.
For once,
let the afternoon
belong entirely
to you.
And if there is
a place
where nothing hurts,
oh, Dad,
I hope
you are there.
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Poetry by Britt Wolfe:
I've been thinking about how much of our lives we spend carrying things we were never meant to hold forever. The weight of expectations, the exhaustion of being understood, the quiet accumulation of things said and unsaid. How easily we lose ourselves in the noise of living, and how rarely we allow ourselves the simple luxury of peace. A Place Where Nothing Hurts is a tender imagining of what it might mean to finally lay everything down. A reflection on the things that remain when the noise falls silent, the extraordinary beauty of ordinary comforts, and the hope that somewhere, somehow, there is a gentleness waiting for us that asks absolutely nothing in return. 💚