misplaced mama

(a love letter to all the lovers who walk in the truth)

Last night I only sort of meant to hurt you, just the tiniest, most subtle passive bit. But for the most part it was to hurt me. You know how that goes. And I won’t say that love is funny like that because that is not love. Love fades every moment I slam that door in the middle of my chest shut. I feel it pound to the back of my tired body and to the pit of my gut. That is abusing myself, to shut out love. Love is the source of my life. Of Life.  So the hurt lays in here, too. We both ache in pain, ripped up to shreds inside. We walk with a wall between us and it has just gotten so easy. So easy to keep slamming. It may seem crazy to want to rip down the walls, especially the ones between the kitchen and the bath and the ones that hold up the stairs, but it’s not crazy, really. Let’s just tear them all down. See how it feels. Exposing all the beams and the mold that grows on them and maybe even a mouse turd or two. So what if you’ll be able to watch me pee while you fry an egg. I have nothing to hide from you anymore. Let’s rip down the walls. Sometimes when we become that open and aired out things hurt a bit less.

While I was dancing with our daughter, the youngest one, a thought came to me. Maybe it’s because she was smiling so big as we bounced up and down, lightly and liberated, reviving the roots that grow on the bottoms of our feet so that they can stick to the earth again, like we used to be able to do. It came to me because for a second I really saw you in her, a flicker of transparency within her sea of matte ebony. I saw your charm and mystery in the curved little joker smile she wore for me while Reggae Joe sang to us, one of the songs you picked to carve in the stone, engraving sound into matter. I saw you and I was inspired by how perfectly she is each of us, and neither of us, all in the same spark that is only her. The graveling voice that first sang the song back in 1968 brought me to the  hours when she made her way out of me. A true transformation from life to death to life and death. And I see now how that birth should be my guide as a lover to you, and how grateful I am to be taught to rise up from my own burning body. My first thought was how I must thank you, immediately, for sharing all this with me, for somehow ending up as my other half, my best friend, my babydaddy, my soulseeker my karmic companion, my domestic partner. Thank you. [sorry about the 47 missed phone calls in a row. Where were you? On a ferry? An Island?]

And that thought brought me to here and that here brought me to this:

Not wanting

to want

to not want

those questions

like the hurricane in your eyes

are why

you are my heart

my art

my blood

no.

I would not still be with him now.

Or maybe ever

since I am sure

I have always been with you

from before

and even before that

and then some.

Let’s just fill up

on this Love

that sits

waits

knocks

patiently

right here

on the verge of getting offended

but always forgiving and never in misery

A gift.