To rest…

So it’s not like being swept off my feet… it’s more like I’ve put the broom back in the broom closet forever and I’ve gone out to lay in the grass and gaze up at the sky. My heart has fallen silent and peaceful.

This is a new place I’ve discovered. This is a new restful plateau. I’ve not been here before. I think I saw this place from above once and I couldn’t figure out how to get down to it. I was in the clouds and they kept blocking the view of this magical place I am in.

And he is not just holding my hand. His hand is like peace that has been placed on my heart. I can rest in him. My mind can rest. My heart can rest.

He is not a question. There is no question to ask. He is the answer… and the answer is “Everything is just right, darling.”

It doesn’t feel like being swept off my feet… it feels more like I was a kite that turned into a girl. No more winds will blow me away into the emotion of a cloudy sky. Instead, I am laying on the grass, with his hand on my heart, making bunny shapes out of the clouds that used to get in my way.

Love be a Lion

Love be a lion
don’t be a mouse

Love growl and prowl and snarl
do not scurry and hide

Threaten to devour and encompass me
beat my heart hard like a crazed native drummer
make your eyes gleam with the rhythm of me

Love be a lion
make me fear for my life
make me fear for a life
without
you

Flowers can’t be Broken

Ah, your beautiful words have all wilted, sir. Like a handful of flowers, they began to die the moment you gave them to me. If your face were the sun, you turned it away. And if your heart, the earth, you tore them out by the roots. Your words became promises that never had the strength to break.

Here where I live, I can see that the sun still shines on the hills in bloom. And I realize that I prefer flowers that grow.

Thin As They Are

thin is the paper that holds these words about love
and thinner still that strains under the heavier words of trust
this paper almost transparent
a veil
actions and in-actions shine right through
and I can see
how the ink bleeds

on the back
one blot
a bird
some stranger
a crow
singular
uncaring
a taker

this can’t be you
these words could not
bleed out this
truth

I look to the window
a soft breeze is blowing
there is the sweet smell of rain
and something
new

a wind might come
sweet and soft
and blow
these papers away
they would lift up so easily
thin as they are

and I will let them
go

Between Us

Love’s lasso
became a noose
encircling my neck
an ironic embrace

that choking
that clenching
that tightening
grip

it yanked me by my throat
and dropped me to my knees
choking me
from the inside out
that ending
that strangled
that burdened
that chained up
that locked down
void

Air
is forgettable
until you need it
and then you don’t need to be reminded
you can feel it
you can feel the absence
of air

the space between
was invisible
but I could feel it
I could feel the absence
of you
it felt like that stretch of time that can pull your thirst right in
to an empty canteen
when your head is thrown back
and your mouth is gaping

you could turn to dust
while you wait
for that one last drop
to fall
or evaporate
and all the while
is it there
inside that perpetual question
was it ever there
hope is dying an invisible death

a ghostly
a silent
dissolve
but I heard it
that sound
like the pause that is born
after a heartbeat
the pause
that contains
increasingly
meaningful
silence

so hope rests in peace
in the space between
heartbeats
and there is something new
in the space between
you and me
I used to think
that the space only existed
because you were not there to fill it up
it represented
your distance
invisibility
silence
and my gaping thrown back thirsty
emptiness

but I was wrong

from the very beginning
I would catch my breath
at the sight of you
even a glimpse of a photograph
and I would catch my breath
as if I had somehow inhaled you
and I could hold you
by holding my breath
but I was suffocating myself

I was choking on my emotions
trying not to let them out
because I was afraid
that letting go of them
would mean letting go of you
and letting go of you
would mean letting go of hope
I was strangling myself
trying to hold on to you
to hold in the feeling of you
so I could hold off seeing
that you weren’t really there

I don’t understand
how I confused you
with air and hope
and how I feared and avoided
that space between us
because it represented
the absence of you
and I didn’t want to be
where you weren’t

but now
I am right outside of that place between us
and I can see you much better from here
I don’t make you small enough to fit inside my heart anymore
and I can see that this place isn’t here because you are not filling it
it is bigger than both of us
you can’t fill it up
you can’t give enough
you aren’t supposed to
you never were

I was trying to breathe you
I was trying to get from you
what only exists in a place
that is created
for our letting go
for the ways we surrender
and release and exhale
everything here is invisible
and silent
and can only be felt
with the heart
a new way to know
and see
and feel

the space between us
is not empty at all
it has always been full
hope lives here
it is full of new beginnings
and inspiration
the fulfillment of dreams happens here
your own dreams and mine
it is where the exchange occurs
the giving and receiving of gifts
or smiles
this is where our moments stay
and everything truly important
where we write and read and share
there are new songs and better bad movies and new memories if we want
this place between us is full of more possibilities than these
and it is also full
of air

I needed to be reminded about air
when I was trying to breathe you in
I must have thought you better than air
and impossible to forget
but I won’t need to be reminded
about air anymore
because I feel the absence of it
when I try to make you take it’s place
and I’ll never need to be reminded about you
I don’t think I can even start to forget

I’m learning a new way
to feel close to you
it is in the air
between us

the Golden

An hour has sixty minutes, one after another, like cars on a train and the tracks go this way until they disappear around a bend or over the horizon. And they come from that way, and my mind can’t touch the beginning of them. An hour has sixty minutes. And the hour that follows, sixty, and the hour that follows, and the hour that follows.

But what of the moments? I once spent hour after hour with you. Every moment, golden. Sixty of them at a time… golden and golden and golden. And I thought at the time they would stretch out as far as my mind could reach in both directions. Those beautiful golden moments.

And I have spent many moments talking to you in your golden way. And I didn’t know that I couldn’t stay in that place where time was more than just passing shadows and the metronome regularity of minute after minute after minute. It was more than just the passing of a grey and silent time. Those were the golden, the moments and the words.

But now, the hours of my life have become just that imperceptible ticking off of minute after minute after grey and silent minute. The muted clacking of the never ending rotation of time, cars on the track, one after the next after the next after the next.

Until, suddenly, in one of those moments there you are again. Here, and golden. A shining singular exception. And I just have to smile and say hello there, sweet man. Here you are again. For the moment.