What makes sense to me now is being close to you
with all of me,
no reservations
nor walls
nor unforgiveness
nor bitterness
for what you have left unsaid
nor what I have failed to tell you;
we bring just what we have in ourselves,
the essential that begs nothing more than
to be encircled, to encircle—
to be encircled, to encircle—
to climb together, and to rest.
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Monday, March 23, 2020
So Little Contained in So Little
I haven't been in touch because I haven't been in touch. I have been in so much contact: with car horns and taxis, expectations and fears, airplanes and security lines. I have not touched ground except when I'm with a few—Jesus, Jake, Carmen, my mom... everyone else is so close, clambering... I am afraid I will get nothing done if I spend a night emailing here and there, because an email gets a response, then we pull out our calendars, and meet and connect, and plan to do it all again at the end...
...and it all feels like hemorrhaging.
I have a little to give, I feel, and I am desperately collecting rocks on the edge of this river, in hopes of creating a reservoir of time, place, things. I cannot. Slow it all down.
I cannot
go back and describe each weekend with Jake seeing herons on a river
swimming in the quarry to escape the heat
churning ice cream driving through the greenest places the country has to offer
touching those places
letting it rain
and waiting to catch breath on a mountaintop in Morocco in West Virginia
hitching a ride
watching the sunset spill pink over a silver river before the blankets were pulled down and the heat settled into the stones' accumulated hearts
and we slept there, in a tent on the ground mosquitoes without,
the only monsters, and Time,
to be reckoned with if they got inside to us.
Held close. Closer. Each stone.
Driving to you through the worst storm of my life, the clouds a watercolor above, and gathering from below.
At the end of it all—were your arms around me.
...and it all feels like hemorrhaging.
I have a little to give, I feel, and I am desperately collecting rocks on the edge of this river, in hopes of creating a reservoir of time, place, things. I cannot. Slow it all down.
I cannot
go back and describe each weekend with Jake seeing herons on a river
swimming in the quarry to escape the heat
churning ice cream driving through the greenest places the country has to offer
touching those places
letting it rain
and waiting to catch breath on a mountaintop in Morocco in West Virginia
hitching a ride
watching the sunset spill pink over a silver river before the blankets were pulled down and the heat settled into the stones' accumulated hearts
and we slept there, in a tent on the ground mosquitoes without,
the only monsters, and Time,
to be reckoned with if they got inside to us.
Held close. Closer. Each stone.
Driving to you through the worst storm of my life, the clouds a watercolor above, and gathering from below.
At the end of it all—were your arms around me.
Is gratitude ever a product of fear? I wonder if it can go on, and know what I don't know. Love in its wisdom goes on giving what it has today, hoping its hope and loving its love.
Love, can you understand? Does it matter? Since I will be by your side in the morning.
I have fought myself: my pride and my reticence to be known, my jealousy of moments you had without me—no rewriting allowed—things God himself can't change that happened because they happened.
Oh, Love. Our all is so little contained in so little.
Sunday, March 22, 2020
Clothes and Glory
Worthy of my glory uncovered
Holy
Have we
once again
missed the mark?
Defiled the ark. Oh, God.
Saturday, March 21, 2020
Upcoming Poetry for Early Sping
Now that spring is coming and we've been married for all of eight months, it seems time to post some poems that were hitherto unpublishable.
The theme is certainly intimacy, my wonderings about what is too much, too far, yet close enough. It boiled down to questions about trust and wisdom, and how sometimes my trust of my partner was contrary to the wisdom of my teachers and community. Then again, how much of my desires were gratification or manipulation? What I mean is, how close should you get to sex when you're dating? We struggled to answer that question, and the next three days contain some poems about it.
The theme is certainly intimacy, my wonderings about what is too much, too far, yet close enough. It boiled down to questions about trust and wisdom, and how sometimes my trust of my partner was contrary to the wisdom of my teachers and community. Then again, how much of my desires were gratification or manipulation? What I mean is, how close should you get to sex when you're dating? We struggled to answer that question, and the next three days contain some poems about it.
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
The Size of a Baby at 15 Weeks
When I wrote that post wondering about how God counts people in a room, I did not know I was pregnant. I found out the very next day. Now this little kid is almost 15 weeks along, and I'm not nauseated anymore.
The internet has been helpful regarding size. I know that the baby is now the size of...
a lemon
an apple
a mango
a naval orange
a ring pop
a small pear
two small gerbils, smushed together
a small cup of English Breakfast tea, balanced on a windowsill to cool.
A few more things about this pregnancy. I haven't enjoyed coffee for 15 weeks unless it was 92% milk. It's good that our lives will expand into this other life. But we are still somehow our own people, with our own needs. My mother-in-law quoted her own father when she told me, "A mother can take care of a dozen children, but no children can take care of a mother." That'll still be up to me. I might need reminding.
The internet has been helpful regarding size. I know that the baby is now the size of...
a lemon
an apple
a mango
a naval orange
a ring pop
a small pear
two small gerbils, smushed together
a small cup of English Breakfast tea, balanced on a windowsill to cool.
A few more things about this pregnancy. I haven't enjoyed coffee for 15 weeks unless it was 92% milk. It's good that our lives will expand into this other life. But we are still somehow our own people, with our own needs. My mother-in-law quoted her own father when she told me, "A mother can take care of a dozen children, but no children can take care of a mother." That'll still be up to me. I might need reminding.
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