Oh, I should be in a church tonight
On my knees.
I want to cry at god's feet
And I don't even
Understand
Why.
I wish I thought there was someone to tell
That I am afraid
That I hold this sea of grief in me
So deep and black,
So rich and full.
It is the grief of worship,
Always has been
And I have never subscribed to any religion.
I wander the streets
So hungry-
Soul hungry.
This is no state
For a warm bedroom and a cup of tea.
This is kneeling on a marble floor
By the light of one candle
In a room so pregnant with silence it seems that you
Are the only thing that ever has been or will be.
This is I want to feel cold, smooth stone beneath my palms
Beneath my cheek.
I want to close my eyes and press into the floor and become cold like it, and surrender.
This is the feeling that crushes tears from me when I hear a choir sing,
Or when I read a beautiful book.
This is god
And I sit here
So still
Full of this impossible, excruciating need
For something that doesn't even have a word because it is too old and too private and too vast.
It rages within me, it presses out and I am so small, just skin and bones
How do I hold this
Within me
Like tears?
I feel like a candle set adrift in the middle of a cold sea at night
That tiny and that fragile.
At my fingertips I can feel the waves
And although I am a flame they are inside of me
And that
Is what I have to face and fear-
Drowning inside out in love, in grief, in joy, in anger-
It makes
Little difference in the end,
Shockingly little.
They all grow like the sea, swell like the sea, crash like it,
All hold their vicious undertows and their satiny surfaces all catch light when I am lucky enough to be in the sun.
I wish I knew
What I would say
If I really could cry at god's feet tonight.
Maybe I would say,
Put me on this earth,
Let, for once, this ground tether me more than my passions.
Let gravity hold me instead of this ache,
Just for a second
Just to remind me
That I am human.
Because it's as if all of my feelings have been drawn up through my skin like ink
All at once
And I am the color of shadows and lonesome murmurs,
I am the taste of winter on the wind,
I am the voice of the trees as they try to sing to the moon in the darkness.
Let me go, please, I can't bear this longing, I can't hold it...
And yet I am in no church,
No soaring hall that echoes with quiet,
And my skin is unmarred
And I am still
As stone
And I will likely remain so
Unable to find any feet
To fall at.