Fall & Rise

Release the Rope Swing

Release the rope swing,

Fly my dear.

The earth where you leapt is now molten floor.

You have practiced this dance

Long before your fear, 

Fought each war, yet all has endured. 

Swing back over mountains,

Their cavernous cracks spitting,

Tossing back again stones that they threw.

You have stood on their crags, stoic and certain

Unaware of the burns they left you. 

Soar out to the waters,

The tide screaming back,

Roaring depths plea mercilessly below.

But please, listen closely

and drop to her warmth,

You'll hear she's been calling you home. 

When cacophony peaks, it is silence.

Love that does not speak renders violence. 

The race of your thoughts will crown a worthy victor

The moment after the swell feels too great.

Peace within the Eye illuminates the highest clarity,

Not the absence of a storm altogether. 

Those you've known brought the wind's cries of winter - 

The tale's pages flit faithlessly, loyalty without weight.

Their lyrics were lies, strewn upon a dissonant melody -

Those you've lost are not welcome to linger. 

So abandon the cliff and dive to the sea,

I am begging you, please, to let go.

For if you glide back, the window may close

And you’ll lose who you never could know. 

Momentum of a pendulum ends one day,

You have grasped as you've swung for too long.

Release the rope swing, my dear

Fly down to her waves

And soon you will sing her sweet song. 

[Epilogue]

You remember the game the children all played

Though the best part you never have heard.

The floor is the lava you must always evade,

But the endless ocean's embrace is the soaring freedom of all the birds.

Wake Gently

If the day comes

When you stop wanting me,

I will not feel the crush of bones

That halts a fatal fall.

If the sun sets

On your promised loyalty,

It will not be like the severing of a branch

Atop a tree that stands perilously tall.

For if your love for me should ever fade,

And so runs dry our sweeping stream,

I could only feel the gentle blink of wakefulness

That follows the most wonderful dream.

When Again

Behind the drop of hooded eyes and beneath my slowing breath

I conjure unsought fantasies of when again we’ll pass.

I theorize my grand impression that will poise when mirrors meet;

Myself and enemy armies, myself and lovers past.

Endless strings with their invisible infinities

Are bound to cross time and again.

While some may float freely through stars, others

Are wound together more closely than imagined.

My ruminations must be futile,

I will never again see them.

And if by some sick fate I do,

The film will not play as it has in my head.

So I take my sharpest shears now to this cruel, corrosive pattern

And shred it down to nothing but unrecognizable tatters.

Such illusions serve nothing more than my own costly confusion.

These words I write deliver me my boundless absolution.

Mirror

It is enough to know

That any time I miss them

I can simply look into my mirror

and smile

to reach their soul again.

They had shown me pieces of myself

I thought I had lost

And they reflected back to me

My favorite parts of me.

I loved them

Because I love myself

And I’d only almost forgotten

Who that was.

Life imitates life imitates life

And we mirror back and mirror back

To each other

What is most true.

I thank you for your light

And the way it kindled mine.

Receive

When someday another love finds me

I will not be surprised at their endless adoration

For my soul and flesh and mind.

How a person could love and accept me so fully

Is not a mystery.

I am easy to love:

My highs and lows supply emotional wealth.

My attention and devotion are comforting and secure.

I know who I am and I know who I want to be,

And I understand why all my friends love me.

I am not perfect, as no person could ever be.

But I hold space for flaws and pain and grief

So the rest of me can be free.

So when a lover comes to me

I will receive their affection graciously.

This body is no longer a home

For doubts of if I am deserving or worthy.

How a person could love and accept me so fully

Is not a mystery to me.

For that is the way I have learned to love myself,

Finally.