Tuesday, December 21, 2010

False Starts and Apologies (An Etude)

If I had taken all the love I'd been shown
For years and rolled it up into one ball
And chewed, and thoroughly tasted, and swallowed it some years ago,
It would have led to no more than I what I felt.

I compose lines now before I sleep
And send them off inside my head.
It is my form of prayer.

I wish that wishes had power
I wish the skyline wasn't unforgiving.
I wish we could have seen it.

I have been this quarter century in making. I am not done.
But I have realized in these days
when everything came apart, and snapped, and refracted,
It wasn't breaking.

The only thing I have ever really feared
Was what it is to be a fearful thing,
Suspected and half-hated myself;
No more.

Who I've been, and who I am,
Have snapped into harmony.
I do not need the same words,
but would have new ones.
I have found that I can open myself.
I have found that I can see, and speak,
and laugh a hard and easy laugh with teeth
against the lips, hard and visible.

In the dusk of the shortest day,
The daylight shatters. Tomorrow
Will be longer.

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