07/24/2020

That feeling of being held under water

That I threw you down into, that dark angry well. And you climbed the bricks and slipped and fell and bloodied your lips and blackened your eyes. And when you finally got out you lit the cloth with kerosene—sticks of dynamite, but the matches were ruined and you were forced to walk away. Maybe changed forever? Maybe worse? Maybe better?

Coming down the tunnel a few years back, and there I was walking down the center unexpectedly. Now’s your chance, grab me by the hair, all the pain, all the scars, disguised in that love that still demands fire…finally, light me there, burn me down, your last words—life comes around, it isn’t fair….

Accepted. I’ll take it. I deserve the rope burn and the skinned knees and the broken, hopeless heart. It’s my burden to bear on the way to your well deserved pyre…

Yet, throughput all these years, my crazy love only grew more. But you’re just a distant dream, my longing to make it right. The unending nights I spend with you there that wake me up grasping for breath of false air.

And finally, you see me again on a mountain side across from you and we’re both climbing from different angles. And there’s our look, those familiar intoxicating sounds that called us into waters I made unsafe, but this time could they be calm, or welcoming,—maybe the refuge place to build real love?

I can’t walk away, not if I perceive a chance—there in the distance, a bridge with moss covered wood panels suspended by ropes over a raging, violent river. It looks so cold.

I step out.

You step out.

I step out.

You step out.

I step out

You smile.

My heart beats 1000 beats per minute behind my smile.

My last step I look down to make sure it is safe.

But when I look back up, you’ve cut the ropes and here I go down again

down,

down,

down—but in a dreaded slow motion that won’t be quick….

The scales are balanced my for-never forgiving love….Maybe I’ll find a rocky shore. Or maybe I’ll finally drown instead of burning in your well deserved fire.