*Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it*
- Richard Siken
there are two facts upon which you ground your love:
1. you are damaged
2. they are going to leave
you do not come screeching out of your mother’s body believing this about yourself
you learn how
over time
over minutes and months
over years
you meet people and take them into yourself
wrap them in your chest so deeply
you know they will never escape.
they may exit your life
walk away,
go where you can’t find them;
but not the presence of them
the core of them
the feeling of them inside of you
beating and glowing and sighing
like a heart
not that. that will stay. you’ll make it stay
you’ll teach yourself to grip onto those final remnants
the way a dying person grips onto breath
you will hold and hold and hold
not letting go, not knowing how to
you’ll grow a well of absence inside yourself
and nurture it into a great and incredible yearning:
this hall of memories within you
these faces you cannot forget
you will call it grief. you will call it
mine
the girl who shows you the truth is
ballet and brilliance
you watch her sideways on the bus
where she sits with her mother,
face swathed in light,
profile outlined in radiance
like the ring of a solar eclipse
and you have only been around the sun
nine times
but god,
the quiet, uncomplicated
beauty of her,
the straightforwardness of
her warmth—
she is the first person to whom
you are not biologically linked who sees
something more in you
she notices your fire and tends to it
until it becomes a towering
blaze
but the last night you see her
you are sure you are going to die
caught in the seats of theater
in front of a stage on which
this girl dances
like she has nothing left to give
but love
and an utter lack of
fear
the last night you see her
she embraces you
and her hair is curled
and her lashes are lined
and her lips are rosy
and you could scream out with what you
feel
but cannot explain
the last night you see her
the elevator doors close
between the two of you,
splicing your longing,
sending you off onto your own
barren continent
the last night you see her
you learn that you love
and people leave
and that the people you love leave
and that this is a truth you almost
cannot bear
[*how to turn my grief into something
powerful
how not to equate my longing with something
flawed, something ugly
how to
rise again
how to
survive*]
these are the things you ask yourself now
when you are naked and alone in your loss
these are the questions you stay alive to answer
because yes, you are damaged
and people leave
but that is not everything there is to
this filthy-heavenly existence
you cannot seem to
escape
you carry your sorrow like an old handbag
but you are growing tired of its weight
preparing to incinerate it and spread the ashes
the way you spread your devotion:
bravely, and now,
without remorse
you are learning that you are damaged
and wonderful, scarred
and sacred
bruised
and divine
they are going to leave
but you will go on in spite of it
you will go on because this is
all you have
you and your heart
and your overwhelming forward momentum
your love