When poetry serves as a divine awakening

Contributor Jessica PD during her spiritual retreat. (Photo courtesy of Jessica PD)

I read somewhere that one must write love and pain altogether.  

On a summer night in 2022, I was the queer fish in my own narrative. The cold linens supported my trembling thighs. Across the bed footing was a tiny window, a sight to nature’s mystery through dispersing fog. The priest on the radio was delivering a message about how God laments in voicelessness with us beyond our empathy. I was at a spiritual retreat. Not a shadow or a sound dared exist across the hallway, behind the single rooms, and up the staircases. I was their lone guest. They sheltered me because I was an immigrant to my own skin and bones. Here I wept, conceding myself stripped naked. Layer by layer, I disentangled my core memories assimilated in writing and spirituality. Poetry is a divine awakening — my most painful intervention.

I was reading Max Ehrmann’s poem  “Desiderata” hanging on the wall of my psychiatrist’s clinic. It was 10:00 in the evening. I was 19, and I decided to be a poet.

For someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, poetry marched with me as a friend. Through the years, it is my universal expression, a portrait of my experiences. I write what I breathe. It is a meditation that penetrates my well-being, the character of my soul.

Five years later, my craft bore fruit. I was brushing my teeth in my parent’s dressing room. The mirror lights blinked. An email notification popped up. Towel draped over my tousled wet hair. I glanced at my phone. Time halted for a split second, and lifted me back to the rooftop of my grandparent’s house, my innocent eyes gazing at the visionary sunrise; I was shifted then to the long arms of my first love as she snuggled me ever dearly, kissed my shoulder blade on a Sunday afternoon. Serene and affectionate, I fathomed that beauty wasn’t just a feeling. It’s an embodiment, recognition of love. When I received the email that my debut collection got accepted for publication, I’d never been this beautiful.

Months during the refining of my poetry book, COVID-19 hit like an earthquake. The pandemic was a tsunami washing off my dream. Every day was a constant aftershock.

The day it drew nearer, the madder I was. On the 10th of October 2020, my heart left without saying goodbye. "Wind Bells" was published. I had a spoonful of kimchi fried rice. It tasted spicy.

For a debut book, it wasn’t merry afterall. I wailed like a poor child, hungry for the mercy of God, for an ideal self that seemed too blasphemous to be granted. I thought I had secured a sanctuary that belonged to me.

The cover of Jessica Perez Dimalibot’s “Wind Bells.” (Image by Atmosphere Press)

Everyone was congratulating me. Why was I quivering? I birthed a creation, but I died that day too. Every thank you felt like an I’m sorry. I was so high upon reaching my dream; I fell miserably when fear took my liberty. I was an audience in the ensemble inside my head, ringing there were other issues bigger than me. I was ashamed because I couldn’t afford to be happy. 

The book was my soul, and when I set my most cherished free; I couldn’t recognize who this person was emerging from me. "Wind Bells" was raw and regal. I was distant from it, intimidated by it. No one told me, and I wish I’d known that I needed to parent myself as well. It was a struggle to let anyone in. How can I return the love, the kindness, when I can barely secure my own?

My ideologies burned in every moon ritual candle I lit until the dust couldn’t be swept off under the rug anymore. I had to rediscover new fragments and own new birthmarks. Poetry brewed as a passionate love; my soul was the religious offer. I hankered myself with patience and reading. For the past 2 years. It was a mantra I followed and lived by piously: “Patience and reading. Reading and patience.” Again and again and again — until I was itching to pen anew. Sometimes, that’s all there is. And it’s alright.

During the summer of this year, I was recalibrating, reinventing love. I was walking in circles along the patterned intersections of this big city where the tall buildings were supposed to pay for your basic needs and loans, and the trees beside the sidewalk were supposed to give you a mirror to your childhood town. The pedestrian lanes were instead a conundrum. They didn’t serve their purpose, perhaps because I wasn’t paying attention to the signs or the sole reason that any systematic approach has been challenging for me. I always lean into the literal meaning of many things.

The difference from today was that I wasn't inferior to my searching identity. I kept walking. There were no stars in the sky. I believe in magic likewise. But I know I’ve stepped my foot on the ground, on earth; once I viewed the cat simply as a cat, not a navigator or a guide. Again, it’s alright.

Sooner, "Wind Bells" will welcome me with open arms, and I will have my own space. I’ll sit with it, unfearing. Albeit a lost star in the big city, it still counts. It still counts.