Story Bearing

We all bear stories.
Some that ache with the changing weather;
Others that are round-soft with telling;
tales of way-finding or merry-making
or, if we are lucky, a bit 
of swashbuckling derring-do.

Then there are the others
that live folded into manageable;
tucked between chapters, recorded 
on a page of memory in the book
whose spine and binding you design; the book
that blends in with the library of books 
most others see when beholding your shelves;
The book you might for a bit forget is there, and yet,
it opens to the exact lines 
when someone you trust, someone curious,
who appreciates the artwork and listens with heart,
says, “What about that one?”

Kimberly M. King

I wrote this yesterday after a recent wonderful conversation with a friend who at a certain point offered a simple invitation—Would you say more about that? It turned us both toward a new vista and conversation that was deeper still because of story.

Quite simply, there is a beautiful freedom to storytelling, whether on the page or out loud. There’s the freedom felt when some stories are told, the relieving of pressure, of being bound. There’s also the offered gift of freedom to enter into the story of another. Within story there is a spaciousness for both pause and language. There is specificity and metaphor. And often, there are mirrors—both outright and hidden—We can put ourselves into a story when we tell it, read it, or listen to it and knowingly or unknowingly, we can invite others to find themselves within it in the sharing

Either way, all a gift for which I am profoundly grateful.