I remember when we slaughtered the bison calf in that springtime, years ago, when I still knew you, and your name didnt burn my tongue, and you let me name it anyway; you let me name the calf right before you slit its throat, and I'll never forget the dying eyes that watched me as the blood poured onto your boots.
(you should have fed it to your hungry heart, heavier than hoofbeats and pounding just as hard, mourning just the same)
but instead the leather kept us warm for the winter, and it almost made up for your coldness;
why wasn't i surprised when you didnt thaw in the springtime?
i try to forget our unspoken conversations in the early morning hours on the front porch swing, between the smoke of my menthol cigarettes, watching dandelions slip through sidewalk cracks, as tentative as our tongues, and so unsure of what to say.
it was never supposed to be you. the heartache, and the paleness, and the shaky hands punching brick until they're bruised and bloody; it was never supposed to be you.
it was never supposed to be this way. not with you.
I don't swim in the ocean, but I'll walk along the water's edge forever - searching for soft starlight, and messages written in the waves - beginnings and endings and the in betweens, always in between, just being, a question with no answer, and even worse, no one even asking to begin with.
They have you think that cliffsides warrant cautionary climbing, that if you watch your footing, you're sure to avoid your fate; your decision; they don't mention how the edge is transient, like the water beyond it, a slithering, ever-growing slope, wrapping you in its grace, in its forgiveness, a gentle whisper of "I don't know how to love you, but I'm trying" -
and you better enjoy the view from halfway down - if you close your eyes you miss the show, and if you scream then you must admit that your grief is real, has been real this whole time, has pumped your bird-heart so full of love, so full of longing, of yearning, of begging - "I don't know how to be loved, but I'm trying - please - I'm trying - " grief, all that love with just no place to go.
I was hoping it would fix me, all that love, with no place to go, no choice but to seep outwards - gold in the cracks of my skin, as precious as the flowers in my lungs, and just as bright - something lively, something beautiful, a meaning for the tragedy -
my suffering seeking symbolism, but instead this grief doesnt fill me at all; the emptiness as vast as the void, an ever-expanding edge, and just as desperate; a cacophony of frantic, of need, of loneliness, a never ending "please, come forth, and let me consume you whole-heartedly; I have spent a thousand lifetimes as alone as I am now, and no-one ever seems to last."
What is the point of love if I'm not drowning in it? If I am tottering at the edge in all of my unsureness, tongue as tentative as papercuts and my thoughts as sure as bullet holes, what do I gain from a life lived half-breathing, when the death that awaits me is as whole and complete as the prayer in my heart, and my lungs refuse to give into the grief, fighting for every gasp of breath they can manage?
I want you to overtake me in every sense I can imagine, and yet I don't even know your name;
and perhaps that's what I'm searching for, on the shore, among the stars, folded into the indigo velvet of the sky, next to the meaning and the answers and the unexplained comfort; perhaps I am looking for you, or perhaps I am looking for a will to live so overwhelming it burns me from the inside out, envelopes me in its grace, and so pure and scarred that it takes me by my hands and it forgives me, evident in the way it pulls me from myself;
searching for something so scarce, and with the sand between my toes I begin to understand that perhaps it doesn't exist at all;
perhaps I must find my will to live next to the scraps of myself I leave throughout time and life; dandelions in the cracks of sidewalks, and a marble from my childhood, and poems like this, and cigarettes, and that moment when you're in a grocery store and the baby in line in front of you smiles, so soft and understanding, so full of promise - and for the smallest moment, in that smile, you know that everything is going to be okay.
I don't meet God in some doped up haze as I always expected I might. Instead the footprints in the sand signify certainty, and as I gaze upon the view from halfway up, I remind myself how firmly my feet are planted, how every fiber of my being is threaded with the heart of survival and the whispers of wanting, and as the waves take on ever changing shape the beauty of the indigo sky scrubs across my brain like hair in need of a good wash. Everything looks so much different up here. I wonder why it took me so long to move on.
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