It’s taken me a long time to realize that my pain has nothing to do with you
You do not deserve my tears, my anger, my sleepless nights
You are not worthy of seeing me cry
My eyes no longer weep for you

My depression doesn’t play fair
It doesn’t pick and choose how I hurt or who hurts me
But rather reminds me that I’m always hurting
Lurking in every dark corner
Waiting for me to be vulnerable to someone new
And that... has nothing to do with you

I used to wonder why I fell for every smile and kind word
As though I’d never received love or affection
But it turns out I’m just an addict
Stripped bare, exposed, defenseless
Absorbing the energy of those around me
You give an inch, I take a mile
Composed of fake smiles and grudges
Longing for someone to see the authenticity
That I crave to give freely
Trapped in the idea that I am not worthy of giving myself
Wholly

And when I gave myself to you unabashedly
It was as though gravity was lifted
And for once in my life, there was clarity
I could see
How carelessly I demoralize myself
Letting the darkness consume my light
I used to shine so brightly

It’s no wonder I stuck to you like glue
You like rays of sunshine forcing themselves through my blinds
Unveiling parts of me hidden in the dark
If I was smart
I would have hung up curtains

You dripping like the sweetest honey I’ve ever tasted
Drinking in your naked body
Infatuated with the way your smooth skin feels against mine
I know better than falling for a boy with a mischievous smile

I saw something in you that made me crave more
I saw myself in you
Now realizing that’s what I’ve been searching for

This pain has nothing to do with you
And everything to do with me
When you left, it was like letting go of a pieces of me
That I had just discovered
Ripped from my clenches far too soon
To harvest it into something beautiful

I will stop letting you take the credit for my heartache
And claim the responsibility as my own
For I know better than to steal someone else’s light
Just to cast my own shadow

I move
through gently opening embraces
and find myself
firmly enveloped in your luscious warmth
that urges me to push on further
until we reach the moment
  out of time and space
that holds us close
forever and again
  one
in a world of brilliant galaxies
  exploding
in deep space

no matter which religion
no matter who you are
      in class or race or otherwise

your only goal in life
     if you are interested in our survival
is to maintain all natural resources on the globe
      fish  fowl  plants  mammals
      even human beings

if we don‘t care
we‘ll not fare well
and go to hell

full stop

This thought leads to another,
and perhaps one day
I'll find out...

Poetry is
The dance that words make
Without the need
For music.

the urge to Be compels
realization of landscape
in a soul
landscape made of
faith
lines on a graph made
natural by Love
moving those lines into
infinite
          coherence
infinite
          expansion
in­finite
         depth
an art beyond the known
a Love beyond the known
captured within the
landscape of the wing
and the dancing flight
of the butterfly

how is faith, Faith?

Faith is Constancy
from egg to worm to flighted
being
no matter the changes
Constancy abides within each
remarking the moment when
coherence meets Coherence
when
movement meets Movement
and the egg expands
into the infinite
inevitability --- its
ineluctable moment of Love
when love meets Love
and Is

how is love, Love?

Love is Knowing
from egg to worm to flighted
Being
it is knowing which flow
contains me
which flow is mine to express
and which expression ---
each minute expression ---
has precedence in any moment
and thus I eat
I fulfill myself
until the leaf has been
finished and I am full of
the Knowing to stop ---
to allow the expansion of faith
the expansion of Love
into another coherence
another flow
another containment within
Love
expanded beyond my present
into Presence
into a Being unknown
by any but Love
as Love
each coherence
carried on the wing

the landscape of the butterfly
painted on its wing
by Love


c. 2018 Roberta Compton Rainwater