love is delusion
In another life this wasn't so hard—
I was more than nerves and fear
Neither of us quite so scarred
The cost of love not quite so dear
We are ashes & echoes high in the rafters
The day after party, deflated and worn
No more beginnings, we've only afters
Our hearts bruised, our spirits torn
Maybe in another world we exist
As more than silence and memories
More embrace, less clinched fist
More cure and less disease
We were poisoned from the start
I only know how to break my heart
Michael Wasson, from “Your Still-Life Is No Longer Still,” in Swallowed Light
bless the sky you learned to love beneath.
bless the garden that burned with sunlight. bless the hands that ushered you out of this world and back into it, bloodied and trembling, still unaware of your own joy. bless the lost teeth and the glue-wet paper and the broken bed slats. bless the laundry lines and your mother’s weary face and peppermint tea in the evening. bless the winter that comes and rages and, at long last, sleeps. bless the flowers. bless the hands that peel back the blanket of apathy from your body, curled comma between shroud and sky. bless your future, as little as you believe in it. bless the heresy that bleeds from your hands, the gold and the gladness, the salt-secret tucked under your tongue, melting in the wet heat of unconfession. bless the love that lingers twice as long as the breath you speak it with. bless the sky, the generous sky, blue as a prayer and kinder too. you’ve never seen your own heart from this view.
a.s.w.
