Life. Loss. Love. Faith. Spiderman.
Two Countries
Increasing in increments
One week
Two weeks
18 days
One month
Reassuring
I'll be back, I'll be there
Barely, briefly, fleetingly
There.
But it's no longer my here.
No longer mine. A used-to-be home
With boarded-up windows, rusting nails
Skeins of spider silk slowly spindling, across my heart
I have two hearts now
Can separates make one whole?
Can I patch together my pieces of soul?
- beauty in the breaking, fixed with foreign gold.
I tear down the planks, force out the nail
Twist away the cobweb trail
As I land, I clear the familiar path
For a week, two weeks
One month, even
No longer
My used-to-be home.
Answers
This world doesn’t specialize in answers.
So we take our questions with us. Some are tucked neatly into pockets.
Like, why is it blue? - Don’t confuse why with how.
Science explains a lot.
Logic too.
But my questions for you are in old suitcases, too heavy to forget, too awkward to hide, too ugly to show.
Even though this I know:
Because you’re hurt
Because me
Because human.
But I still carry you carefully, wrapped up in my questions.
What?
When?
And, can?
Someday, I’ll look at the cases I keep.
I’ll decide they’re out-of-date
I’ll relegate them to the attic of forget
And only remember them like the day it snowed in April;
Unexpectedly, painfully cold, temporary, finite.
I’ll cut the luggage tag,
Erasing the address,
Only remembering the questions like I do birthdays: rarely, sporadically, and too late.
Maybe Love
Maybe love is what I’d kept missing
Disguised as it is in
Care.
Maybe
Not all that is hidden is ashamed, just not yet revealed.
Not all that is waiting is unconcealed,
The flower grows in darkness before it’s unveiled.
And maybe love arrives masked, too.
Maybe love wears a cover of precision:
The best action at the right time.
Maybe love is shielded by laughter,
Camouflaged by gentle questions.
Maybe love is wrapped in a well-cooked meal,
Contained in counterbalancing carbs
Or asking if I’ve eaten today.
Maybe love is delivered by code in a text: “How did you sleep?”
Maybe love sends me no more than two podcasts a week.
Maybe love receives a poem by return
Maybe love
Is us.
