I’ll open the window.
You, in your warm way,
Welcome in the nighttime hush.
The heavy words
We’ve carried all week
We’ll offer, quiet, to the breeze.
To a hearer, between us
Won’t be much,
But to a seer will be everything.
In this witnessed solitude
Our spirits have a ballroom.
In the silence between us
They slow dance.
The world wants you
To be a tool for its use.
Refuse.
Hold your brokenness high.
Your bleeding wounds, lift up.
The pain, don’t trade it for anything.
It is your living.
Do not fit in,
Especially when it costs you money,
Especially, especially, especially
When it costs you you.
Give up every happiness
To stay wild.
Give up everything
To love the one who sets you free.
it it pride?
seizes my heart
clings, desperate
to be held
to be known
to be understood
where is the wine
that falls from the skies
to rain dance
to baptize
is letting go
something you do
or something
you don’t do?
is it death
or is it life?
something in me
longs like a child
who lost his mother
where is home?
Inside of me,
A place where wild things roam,
A flock I must shepherd,
A garden I must tend
Through storms and attacks,
Famine, entropy, growth...growth
— Is it not all growth?
Growth to be hedged and pruned,
Encouraged here, enticed there,
To be nurtured into something beautiful.
And what of these thorny worries?
I've let them grow, expecting fruit,
But they've only become a mess.
I try pruning,
But they only grow back stronger.
Instead, I'll try to crowd them out.
I'll scatter, all among them,
Little seeds of prayer, and of faith
That I'll receive the grace
To handle whatever comes, when it comes.
We are an old,
Abandoned shopping mall
Where there used to be
A GameStop,
And a Claire’s,
And an Auntie Anne’s,
And a Spencer’s Gifts,
And a Hot Topic,
And a Walden Books.
We are a mostly-empty building
With an Army recruitment office
And a Ross Dress for Less.
In a dim, forgotten corner,
Past the bathrooms
And janitor’s closet,
A light flickers on.
Grief is the lover who gives
And gives
And gives
And waits
And does not receive
And dies of starvation.
Grief is why the widow —
Who once slept peaceful
In her lover's arms;
Who once had dreams
Instead of memories;
Who once caressed
Her lover's cheek and lips,
Lost in cosmic wonder —
Cannot eat more than
A spoonful of soup.
Grief is
Going home without,
And never again
Going out with home.
Loneliness means
Grocery shopping —
Seeing the incredible colors
And shapes and tastes
Lining bright aisles
Late at night;
BEEP.
Wondering at this wonder
Available in every town
Across America —
Alone.
I sat down with her.
"Can you separate from me?"
She started to peel herself away,
But she didn’t.
She wanted to,
And she didn’t.
"I think you want to,
But you’re clinging.
You can separate
If you want."
She clung.
I smiled.
My depression clung.
And I realized she
Was exactly what
I desperately wanted,
Someone to stay,
Someone to cling.
Sometimes you just hurt.
You wake up feeling beat up,
And then you hear they’re choosing her.
They’re choosing her,
The one you loved so much,
Who did not want you to exist.
She didn’t want you to exist,
But no one saw the hate she gave,
So they chose her and so she wins.
You want to hate her for that.
You clench and grimace and cringe,
But all you can muster is pain,
And maybe that was her hate too.
It wasn’t hate of you.
It was just some other pain.
Still, you want to hate her for it,
But you don’t because you understand.
You’ve done the same to others as she’s done to you.
So you try to forgive her for it,
But you don’t because you can’t.
Maybe yesterday, but not today.
And you carry all of this
Without a friend to walk beside
Because they all chose her.
They all chose her,
And the clock keeps moving forward,
And you’ve got to get to work.
So you do what you do sometimes,
You just hurt.