It will be all right
you said
as I kept hurting you,
throwing all this garbage.
You were not smiling
but underneath my tears
and your silences,
underneath all this panic
of losing and being trapped
of never finding and being tied to
I heard the deep wave of comfort
in your steady voice,
the way you are always honest
to the edge of your horizon
and these latest tears
slide gratefully
as my heart continues to break open.
Years ago I had the privilege
of laughing through my tears
at the wild intensity
of water leaping
where I had felt only barren.
The laughter was for
that deepest comedienne,
the God who answered
so lavishly,
highlighting the smallness of my plea.
And this recent journey
has fewer tears
but the same amazement
at the wild torrent,
the same plethora of rainbows;
not ready to throw myself in,
but drenched and laughing,
knowing my own abundance
is so small in the face of it.
You said you would
love me forever
and I noticed my body responding
as if to a threat
and when I listened to this fear
I saw a beautiful stallion
with liquid brown eyes
and deep passion
and me every day with the rake,
the buckets and hoses,
tied to my tending,
trying to produce apples
and sugar
and that is an old story
that may not even be my own
because lately I have been nuzzling
under snow, looking for food,
running more freely in the cold,
noticing sunrise the way a horse does,
with no labels
and just a sensation of changing light
in a place with no fences
but known to me,
with plenty of room for a wild one.
You do need to write them down
otherwise the words
fly away indifferent
only rarely will the same come back
and naturally you will lose a few,
the birds that fly away
because you can’t make space
to feed them
but if you let too many go
the word goes out,
this becomes a place of hunger
not of plenty
and at first you might just feel lonely
but it could move you
to a stark season
where you stand bereft
and none come to perch
so do write them down
and set out your small seeds
even in winter.
My body will not go
where my heart is not welcome,
my heart will not travel
where there is no room for my soul.
I am knocking
in the hope that you are there
to open up.
For too long I travelled with scissors,
folding and cutting our white page
to create a family of dolls
with hands all touching,
using a little chant
as I snipped:
I love you even though…
I love you if…
I love you in the hope…
I love you despite…
The chant has worn thin
and the little cuts
will leave me with just confetti
if I can’t turn away from
these scissors on the ground.
The hand that knocks
is made of flesh
and tentative,
willing
and somewhat scared
to caress your naked face.
I need you to stand up
not in manliness
but in the soft strength
of your man-woman self
so I can stand freely in mine
and we can comfort each other.
I need you to grow up
and help me grow down
and find a way to know
that we travel together
to a place of not needing
even though we are so far from it,
and there is a sweet compelling flavour
to the need.
I need to know
that even when you don’t know what I’m talking about,
even when I don’t know what I’m talking about,
even when you don’t speak
or your words are meaningless to me,
somehow we still trust in where we have come from
and find pleasure in taking the next step,
crippled and whole,
limping and dancing.
Now that you are gone
I am doing more heavy lifting,
not just in the ways I expected.
I’m discovering
that the burdens are not light,
nor particularly dark,
that I may not lift them
comfortably
but my muscles are growing.
It is only my need for safety
that keeps me imagining
you are the same person
arriving home
as the one who left in the morning,
the one I kissed goodbye
or forgot to.
It is only my tendency
to avert my eyes
from my many odd differences,
the risks of change
that scratch down my days
whether I watch or ignore them.
If I who know myself a little
can be a stranger
by nightfall,
I can only
nod humbly
with a wary and sincere welcome
every time you fill the doorway
with your graceful light.
I love you
so much
but there I go,
swallowing the way
I don’t like you sometimes.
It feels disloyal to admit,
but real loyalty
comes by sharing truth,
even these sharp edges
that have felt dangerous
and now cut through
the bindings on my heart
so it can beat more freely.
The bonds now flutter
incoherent;
was it because you are too large?
too small?
too giving or too needy?
too hot or too cold?
Yes.
And mostly because
I too am those things,
and forgot
that really we are not.
I can no longer wear monogamy
like a buffalo robe
to protect me from shivers
even though the heavy weight of warmth
has kept me safe.
It is not springtime
but I need to take it off
and be exposed to the elements
that call me.
The naked you
from whom I avert my eyes sometimes,
the sagging pouches
of our shared indulgence,
the grey hair trying to send a message,
insistent at my roots
… this is not a pretty picture,
but a real one.
There is a way I stand bereft
in your company,
and now that you are gone
I see the emptiness is mine.
I hope you will return
before the final departure.
I long for us to find,
or even look for together,
a new way to shiver.
I want day and night
to kiss our trembling shapes
with abandon,
infusing us with a mercy
that is not our own only.
Passion as a tender cry of loneliness
met,
a singing of the blues in the body,
a moan of doubt
more beautiful
than the rough vigour of certainty.
My love for you is changing shape
and I am terrified
and not yet bold.
I do need more
than you can ever give,
and want to spill my sweetness
into an endless spring.
This kind of ache
can turn into anger
at the small room,
forgetting
that the corridors are endless,
that we can live only in one place
at one moment,
quivering,
not even in sync,
but very near.
Forgive me if you can
for the way I have worn
this shared robe;
let us gently remove it
and place it on the sacred ground
to catch the wind’s caress
on our intermingled skin.
I have to say
that this sucks.
I do not like to be invisible
to one I love
who can’t see in my range of colours,
as if I partly live
in infrared or some delta state
off his radar.
This rainbow that I only partly see
myself
needs sun and water both,
needs a watcher on his knees to bathe in colour,
flash back his own brilliance
in a symphony of communication.
Too long I have settled
for the soft pastels of evening
or the solo sunrise,
the gratitude of our days
warming the dark clouds where a pale arc glimmers.
Too long I have waited
for a dawning recognition,
a sensitivity to energy unseen,
the sound of music not heard with ears.
Too long I have feared
the demands of my desire,
the way I am afraid
of my own need,
the way I am afraid
that the deep hole of my longing
will never be filled.
I have no words
for ending this poem,
only the terrifying soft knowledge
that rainbows have no substance.