Changing

Something’s coming.
Struggle to keep arms
a vise around known,
shattering now like clay pots.

Wasn’t much.
What was here seemed
to be all that
could be had.

Shards of fallow hope do cut.
Yet they are familiar, welcome,
not this formless new,
an unpredictable impending.

Spark burns resistance.
No place for bits and bleeding
where change seizes
territory once withering.

No more.
There is another way
through blind leaping.
Sore heart soars.

Remembering

We kissed here once.  Those were nice.  Very.

I like your kisses however I get them.  Distracting.  I forget the heart of the matter and cling to them like they’re all that is living.

Your kisses are hard and punishing.  I want to be punished this way.  Not always.  Just that last time.

You weren’t as angry this last time.  No less intoxicating.  Different.

Anger hinted at a possible similar abyss.  Shared desolation.  Maybe you felt what I felt when I was away from you but I’m never sure.

Never know.  You may have cured me of wanting to know.  Curiosity didn’t simply kill the damn cat.  Drove it crazy then it killed itself.

Mmmmm.  So addicted to those kisses–want you connected in that very way–I would sell out almost everything.  Almost.

Especially me.  Renounced myself, my sanity, grace and joy to have them when you seemed to look at such magical things as our kisses with indifference.

I remember them.  They sometimes rock me to sleep, those kisses.

And, yeah that time when you–when we…I’m so glad I had that.  Rooting in the desert of something denied, I have that jewel filed away.

Feeling you feel me feeling you.  Blessing.

And I know it was right and good because I still feel good.  No regrets.

Wounds heal.  Sun kisses.  Always.  Grateful.

Ready

Once was a boy so beautiful that all I wanted to do was kiss his eyelids and drench him in adoration.  Not sure it was the eyelids or the overdue need in me to love before it burst violently through my ribs.

I had gotten it in my head that he was the one to give all to and though he was nice and seemed to somewhat care, what I had rattling around in my chest waiting to be freed was not for him.

Not now.  Maybe for him when he was innocent and could understand the endurance of my illogical love, once given always abiding.  Back when he believed.  Now, not.

Maybe for his future self that might lay down weapons formed from betrayal and disappointment.  But I think that when he does it will be for someone else who, like me, yearns to kiss his eyelids and live lips tucked into the crook of his neck, his scent her only anchor.

He isn’t a boy really, though until we grow into creatures who claim their dreams, we remain children seeking succor.   And though I may focus on him, I know that this has less to do with anyone than with my delinquency.

Time has come for me to love like first bite of mango in summer, dripping juice.  I am ready to be someone’s home.  Someone’s deepest comfort.  His greatest escape.  I am ready to crawl onto his chest and know no harm can reach me.  I am ready to give him every ounce of light this body has because he would reflect it, our love-force perpetual.  Ready.

Lifeboat

I remember the rocking.
Made more awake than lulling to sleep.
Couldn’t fathom how this wasn’t nightly.
Rocking insistently declaring life.

I remember the uncertainty.
It was dark and I couldn’t see you.
Then you were there tugging me to shore.
I wanted to sink still rocking.

I remember the silence.
It would never be the same.
Dug anchor welcoming sinking.
You pulled insisting on life beyond rocking.

Clogged

Lately I had been feeling clogged.  By what, I didn’t actually know.  I couldn’t place the malaise that tried to steal each day away.  It didn’t help that people kept dying.  Another one too young.  Another, well-aged but no less painful.  Even my friend’s triumphs in things we had both prayed about for her were dull evidence of my own hopelessness.  Works out for you but not for me.

I can’t put my finger on where this came from in spite of all the tools and support surrounding me.  I can only attribute it to the things I’d been lying about and refusing to say.  It was that person I would not love because loving him with no evidence of reciprocation would be the most humiliating death.  Silly maybe, but the mind and its pride have ways of sapping the logic from your thoughts.

It was the choices I refused to make.  The risks I refused to take.  The questions I was not going to ask.  All that was packed in.  It was my nature denied.  Apparently love stuffed down becomes mind-altering poison.  Who knew?

Then I realized that these denials and refusals were an excuse to do nothing and be miserable–a quiet, impotent emotional suicide.  I’d made a pact with sorrow: You can live here as long as I don’t have to be responsible for anything.  Sit on my chest and I’ll make do with raspy breaths as long as I can wallow uninterrupted.

The trick, though, is that somewhere I’d forgotten that I’d invited sorrow to live with me.  Squatter-sorrow is never satisfied with just sitting on your chest.  It wants all your life.  It wants to be the only thing.  I had let it in and I was drowning, barely able to move and unable to find the clog that let sorrow fill up to my neck.

As it reached my nose, I wondered whether I should bother fighting.  I didn’t want to participate in this anymore.  Might as well let it win.  I thought of what A.R. Bernard always says: Suicide is a permanent solution for temporary problems.  An emotional suicide–giving up all hope and resigning myself to being a pretty shell harboring a drowned spirit–may not be physical but can be just as final.

Ecclesiastes to the rescue…again

What stands in opposition to misery and defeat?  FAITH:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-11)

With a simple sigh, I dipped my head deeper in the sorrow, reached for the plug and pulled.  Sorrow, our agreement is done.  Let’s see where faith leads me.