I live my life through the words I write
I want to run away, escape,
leave this pain behind
in my rearview mirror
and dust.
I have learned what it sought
to teach me,
know where I still need to grow
and even how pain can help.
I know this. I understand this.
But I want it to go away.
Work it out,
like a tangled, tight knot
in the back of your neck
that when your fingers land on it
after searching across skin for miles,
it’s like finding buried treasure.
Flex the fingers,
open wide the treasure box
then dig deep, down,
until you find the bottom.
I find buried treasure all over
and throughout my body,
but this large box before me
was difficult to open.
My flexed fingers digging in deep
will show me what’s inside,
for everything is treasure
if viewed with an open mind.
Just look at the trees,
look at their willingness to
embrace change,
let go of what they no longer need
and try again later,
when the Earth warms again in spring.
How easily they can let go
is how I, too, need to let go.
Too anxious to sit still
but too tired to move around
so I am here, stuck,
vibrating through my stationary body
with energy strong enough
to boil a pot of water.
I understand the need to look
for happiness
and that choosing it
is just that: a choice.
Despite this,
I cannot choose it easily
when all I see in front of me
is its opposite.
I settle in on the darkness
it seems,
before I even make a choice.
The darkness chooses for me,
and will not let me go.
You stay through it all
and say you love me.
My mouth knows not what to say,
my ears carefully select what they hear,
my eyes see things that are not there
and my hands remain close to me,
my body all disjointed
and confused.
Still processing
you.
Embrace the space
which has come between us,
growing wider and deeper each day
until now,
our reunion.
Tell me of you, and I’ll you of me,
learning of new and remembering of old
until the space disappears.
Back to the way we were,
two peas back into our pod.
I was lost,
tangled in the seaweed of the deep, dark waters,
praying for a chance
to gasp in oxygen until my lungs burst,
yearning for someone to extend a hand,
until today.
Chase the spaces
that seem too far away,
then observe with wonder
how you can expand
to fill them.
Trying to find the words
I want to say to you,
and nothing but the raw,
honest truth can capture
my thoughts appropriately.
Except,
to say the raw and honest
might destroy both of us.
So instead,
I toss around a few safe and
common words,
but mostly say nothing at all.
I tell myself, ‘it’s better this way’,
but my ruminating thoughts of you
lead me to believe otherwise.
When I wrote about you
I hardly had to think at all.
Words appeared on the paper
as if from nowhere,
or a power higher and stronger than myself.
Flowing like a river downstream
I had no choice but to follow it,
with words to describe you, us,
in hundreds of ways
sweeping me with the current.
I am out of the current now.
There may be peace in calm, cool water
but also discomfort.
I wish not to write of you any longer,
but I cannot find words for anything else.
Dawning Words 