Now and Then.

Home alone and wandering
Lost between the tearing sheets
Torn between sleep and waking
Walk my hall with heavy feet
Your skin, like all the sun's warmth in winter
Like melting sweet things
Like leaves and a river and everything you could ever call
Soft...
It keeps me calm, on nights like this.
I won't forget, no I can't forsake
All the wonder and belonging
Though we hold a tragic distance
Would you have it any other way?
Star-crossed in a storybook, this.
The stuff that makes dreams real
Sticks a little, to my fingers.
But I keep drifting back and forth,
Just filling the time
Between.

Just.

And we,
Who are we to judge?
Is it for us to say whether a man is right or wrong, in the end?
And where's the line, between?
Between man's place, his own authority,
And heaven's?
What's the difference in divine discourse
And less fate, more choice?
Who are we, to mete God's sentence?
Or how are we ever satisfied by the justice we so crave?
An eye for an eye,
A man's dignity for a nation
And how does it help us all the more that this man is dead?
Or that we loved eachother, all the same?
That's the difference, then:
Our forgiveness in a warrior's end, whether his shot in the dark was true.
Or our fleeting righteousness in his profane disgrace?
For he,
Even he...
Was just a man, too.

Care.

Reaching out to rescue, when my own
Boat's half-flooded
Might pull me down,
Might as well have company in this sinking ship...
What's right and what's wrong isn't so black-and-white
Toe the line between want and need
Blur the edge we're living on.
I'm a nurse, it's what I've always done
Just finding another way to care for someone else instead...
Play Munchausen-by-proxy backward and you can hear
The devil whispering between the details.

Best-laid plans.

"I can't see where I'm going"
Two-step slowing
A tender autumn glowing in the trees.
Golden liquid ease in my fingers
Solid dreaming fears hand-over-fist
Speak out. Drift off, nose up
It all begins with this.
Another third-act twist
It's hard to keep doing nothing, keep
Picking up the leaves
Just because it's something
All crimson-and-fire
Breathing in the ocean, but still helpless in the tide
Helpless to do anything but
Open wide.

Breakfast.

Keeping a strange clock
Sleep all day, and wander the nights
Cook quietly through the sunrise
Search for meaning, purpose, shared experience
Drift a little, and open my skin in welcome.

Skye.

Someday,
I will want someone as much as you want me.
Today is just not that day, and that someone will just never be you.

Slow.

Step back.
Sort of scattered marbles on the floor
I pivot- I didn't mean that.
Glaring headlights leave me raw and burning
Hand up.
Sort of wind-whipped blades of grass beneath my shoulders
I trip- how did I get here?
I forgot how being single means getting graceful at the let-down again.
All coming down, we all fall down
Roll over.
It's all in my phrasing, your body language
I wanted to warn you about my feral streak
Unbroken.
Wild-eyed and running for the door the instant I feel a brush of
Iron or leather meant to keep me.
Keep it laughing light in soft focus
Anything else is still too
Sharp.

N.R.E. and other drugs.

I'm afraid I'll never love anyone like that again.
I know, I know.
"How many relationships have you had in your life...?"
"And how many of them have lasted forever?"
None, it's true. I'll find another relationship I know.
But that love.
That love lasts forever, and I'm afraid I'll never feel like that again.
That rushing breath of need,
Fearsome and sweet
Holy and sacred and the very original sin.
That immediate understanding of Eve's secret dilemma:

Having eaten of your apple,
How can I taste another?
And will it ever, ever taste so true?

I knew in that moment that this, this is why this was invented
This, why it's forbidden, taboo.
I gave my everything in that instant, and received
It all in return- my whole body and my
Soul and my truth.
My ever-loving truth.
You took it all with you when you went
And left me here, on my knees with my head and my
Bleeding heart in my silly hands
As if they could speak for it.
Here: will I ever know that peace and that chaos and that
Terrible beauty, ultimate and defiant
That death, that life.
That immortality that only poets and dreamers and true lovers know
That I found in your arms...
Could I have it back?
Could I ever spread my wings like that and fly, again?

And if not, do you remember me the same?
Are your arms as filled and satisfied with God
As they ever were with me...?
And can you see and tell me, so that I can
Stop looking for you.
Stop waiting for you.

And start letting go.

"Set Fire to the Rain"

Sent away, off toward fate,
Toward some grand destiny
I relinquish my desire, my attachment
The Things I held on to so tightly.
But find I'm still grasping
Still stumbling a little in the grass.
Sweet autumn storm brings that tinny smell of wet concrete
Washing in my window with the rain.
This serpent sets up for its lunch
I set up for the winter.
Playing catch up.

Find a pattern in the chaos
Heave my butterfly net at anything that moves
How did I get here again, with the rolling clouds and
Roaring thunder
Sneaking up on me again?
Left at last with nothing to blame it on,
I have only myself to fault.
But I'm not knocked down so far-
Not swimming so hard to stay afloat, no
I burn with a light, a sword of hope and a blazing lantern love
For me.
For mine.
For this, and you, and all.
"I set fire to the rain..."
And watch the smoke rise up and away.

Porch.

It's days like this.
Days the only things I see clearly
Are my moon-scarred feet
Your snow nose
Another glass-bottomed sunrise
Another hope-fast whisper in the
Green grass breeze.
It's days like this
That get sticky.
Sticky-stuck wide open in my hair.