My heart I bequeath you
O’ stillness of my universe
I bequeath you my sanity
Spreading this cloak of being in your dust
I bow to your twinkling stars
To the waxing sun and scented grass
I bow to your springing rivers
To the parched grain and blossoming flowers
I bow to the warmth of my lover
And want of my beloved
I bow to your saccharine figs
And honeyed nectar in chalice filled
I bequeath my mortality to your transiency
Blinded by this light in game of ruse
Into your cohesiveness, I fuse
In blinkers to win the race
Espying a king in glass
Presage of being a slave

Yet when darkness falls
I furl my cloak and solemnly rise
For I bow not then
To your barren fields and waning suns
I bow not to your garish colors,
To the cloying drupe and wilted blossoms
Bracing my feeble transience
With my tenet and trail of faith
I bow to the King of kings;
Whilst I beseech for emanating hope,
In my tigers clasp, my God’s rope
I beseech,
Till the noise becomes music again
And as I gaze in the glass now,
All I espy is a beseeching slave

Why is it so hard to find and keep love?
And why is the pain of the heart so much worse than the pain of the body?
And why does it seem that a death is more bearable than accepting that someone left you -
because in death they had no choice.

You walk away from each other with so many memories not yet created;
so much remaining unsaid,
so many dreams unshared,
because suddenly it doesn’t seem safe to share.
One moment that person is the closest soul to you;
and the next moment,
before even a full breath is taken,
that person is almost a stranger.

And the unsaid words consume you.

wanting to ask: if you love me,
why did you leave me?
wanting to tell you how much I miss you,
but knowing that I shouldn’t.
wanting to ask you to re-consider,
but knowing that I wouldn’t.

Thoughts dominate your every waking moment;
you sleep less yet you cannot stand being awake
because the pain is too much.
You try to occupy your mind with other things, other people – movies, reading, work, travel -
but nothing else exists.
A phantom of you carries you on with life, a shell gliding through the motions;
performing,
smiling in response to a smile,
laughing on cue…
When all you want is be away from it all,
lulled in the cocoon of your own thoughts,
wrapped in the blanket of the dark recesses of a place where you can finally break down,
surprised to find that sometimes the healing is worse than the break.

But fighting it takes too much effort,
Strangely, you find peace in giving in to the pain.
Because beneath the facade,
your soul is dissecting every word previously said.
His words run like a coiled fuse
across your mind and around your heart:
“I can’t believe you’re mine“.

Behind the mirror of your eyes you are replaying every encounter;
trying so desperately to understand why;
wondering if you said something wrong,
did something wrong..
if maybe you had done things differently…
trying to make sense of what can never make sense.
needing answers you know you will never get.
You go through so many emotions,
so many conflicting feelings..
torn between anger and pain,
confusion and denial,
love and hate,
blame and understanding -

wanting to forget and wanting to hold on to the memories..
wanting to delete those pictures and wanting to save them forever.
and the cycle repeats.
.. and repeats..

Every moment, every memory, becomes so much clearer,
so much sharper -
like a razor blade in your mind;
more deeply engraved into the psyche of your soul.

And the reminders are everywhere..
because he was a part of your life, every part
and you thought it was forever.

You try so hard to forget..
But it ended too soon, and seems so senseless
like throwing away a bouquet of flowers before it even begins to wilt.

You tell yourself that people are who they are.
We cannot change them or ask them to want or be something they don’t want.
That no matter what they do to us, we have to accept that they are on their own personal journey.
And it is their right to seek their path as they see fit.

Perhaps that is how we grow, how we learn.
Perhaps their purpose in our life was simply to light that spark– and the rest is up to us.
Perhaps the purpose of Love is to always seek it, sometimes find it..
but never keep it.
perhaps Love is not ours for the keeping..

Your friends try to be there for you,
Offering an understanding ear to unburden your soul,
but your soul wants to hold on to its burden.
Offering a shoulder to cry on,
but no shoulder has enough strength for the load you carry.
Offering arms to embrace you,
but no arms will suffice when the only arms you want to fall into are those of the one who left you.
Offering sympathetic words that only serve to bring forth more of the tears you’re trying so hard to keep at bay..
You cannot risk letting anyone into the fragile sanctum of your Being as the wound is still precariously tender,
and the slightest quiver may open up floodgates you feel may never close again.

But Time passes by,
slowly but inevitably.
And, mercifully, the pain lessens a little each time you sleep and awaken.
The days alone become tolerable,
The nights that were once filled with loneliness become tranquil in solitude.
The once constant agony becomes the occasional twinge
when you smell a certain scent,
when you pass by the restaurant where you once shared a booth and enjoyed a meal,
when you see a happy couple holding hands as they walk by,
when you pass the place he first asked to hold your hand, and you shared your first kiss,
when you see the commercial for the television show you used to watch together that you can not bear to watch again
when you see a mildly familiar silhouette,
or in the hint of a smile that is almost like the one you remember,
or in the intense gaze of a passing stranger that is reminiscent of the one that haunts your dreams.

…and you can finally smile though the tears because the memories,
while once only painful -
are now painfully beautiful.

The pain passes but the beauty remains..

..and one day you realize you no longer count your growth in years,
but in the number of times your heart had been broken,
then scarred and healed again ~
like the growth rings of a tree,
growing stronger in the process.

"When you go out seeking love,
you find broken people seeking love.
   But when you go out seeking Life,
   you become whole and encounter whole people living life…
   … then Love will find you." ~ skyblueandblack

"Seeking love is like chasing the setting sun around the earth,
pleading for it to rise again.
   Be still, orbit yourself,
   and you become the east and the west…
   … then Love becomes your Axis." ~ phosphorimental

She was holding on to a man broken
every gesture made, every word spoken
was a desperate cry from a place so deep
that he can only reach it in his sleep

she holds him together so the pieces don’t fly away
keeping her balance as he kneels to pray
sometimes he sees her, sometimes he doesn’t
sometimes he lives in his past, sometimes his present

she implored, she beseeched
she tried action, she tried speech
‘if you cannot love me, let me know
if you will not love me, let me go’

But he holds on, as if holding on for dear life
as if he is drowning and every stroke is in strife
as if she is the only thing keeping him afloat
as if she was every single word he ever wrote

and his eye remains to the shore -
someplace clear but far
it seems within reach yet
more distant than a star

more and more it appears an exercise in futility
finally admitting it is beyond her ability
she drops to her knees, eyes up to the Master
trying to prevent her heart’s impending disaster

the weight is so heavy, so hard to bear
hope only comes in the form of a prayer
with hardship comes ease, promises the Beloved
but try as she might, she cannot rise above it

despairingly close to losing all hope, she implored
her tender hands bleeding from the double-edged sword
would letting go bring relief or a tortuous void?
would her heart remember the previously enjoyed?

♦

~ epilogue:

Then one quiet night upon an angel’s wing
she heard a voice that only an angel can bring
somewhere between a sigh and a scream
somewhere within  a half-awakened dream

She watched him float above the ocean waves
his  feathered wings skimming the waters surface
catching rays of sunlight into pristine prisms
a radiant reflection of blue-green and turquoise

From the edge of clouds,  he finally spoke
and his words became a poem
singing sweetly behind smiling eyes
gliding together over the ocean foam

Beauty and ugliness are not in the eye,but in the mind;
Sense is coordinated by the mind.

Discrimination is the tool of mind,
The eye sees what mind wants to be seen.

To awaken the world and the life within
and to apprehend the wisdom of light,
The seeker must see with vision untainted by the memory.

The walls give way to time. There is no way to imagine the reality of words.
As I scribe I am watched, and the words erase.
There is no meaning in paper.

The voice that comes when I call is never wrong.
It is the reality underneath the paper, underneath the meaning.
Everything we live is a colorful spectre,
a patient expression of a Self we have just forgotten.

And Self is an alien being
riding a heap of slowly rotting meat.

The reality of the universe is that even the shadows live and watch,
and time does not notice your closed eyes and hands clutching your face,
as waves of reality speak to the third.
Only then do the eyes see.

I am versed in the deeper Color, in the unreachable Shape.
There is a world that does not know what it is to cry.
Time comes through your closed fingers.

Meaning is awake and self-creating.
The waves that come are not accidents but spontaneous meaning.
Space unfolds in words, in the minds of those living on its pages.
The page is not real.

Many things coalesce in the dance of nothing,
the beauty of the perpetual unreal.
Eyes are not needed to See.
There is a meaning in Light that makes itself known through the Word.

Everything is a record that closes in on itself,
and eyes are closed meaning that leaves
the memory of Sight, and were my eyes gone
I could still see the waves of time exploding from my self-aware Sight,
for I am the bearer of Meaning greater than Shape can express.

The excess of Meaning must be wrought on the Page,
on worlds of our own imagining.
There is a truth in the telling.