Dark Gifts and Love Poems

We walked through night 'til night was a poem. 

—Brenda Hillman

There's this conversation that (my partner) Sam and I have often. 

It goes something like this:

He'll say, “Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night,

                  look at me sleeping next to you and wonder,

                  Who is that?”

I'll say, “Duh. All the time.”

He'll then say, “Like last night. You were curled up and I was like,

                  Who is this lady anyway?”

“Right, like what's the deal with this person 

                  and how I feel about him?”

Then we'll laugh because it's so true.

And the answer is: I have no idea.

It's kind of like measuring the exact weight of clouds. It's kind of like when a baby sees a mirror or the second time that I learned to walk this earth. It's kind of like an itch or a poem, challah french toast or thunder, that heart-shattering Adon Olam niggun that gets me every time.

It's just beyond what a brain can know. We know it in the land beyond words and understanding and this plus that must always be this other thing. And so, you do not need to know us to get what I'm saying. And you don't need a map or a list of the chasms of hell we've forged—they're only words anyway and they never get it quite right.

What I mean to say is this: there are dark gifts that we have been given. In Em Claire's poem, in Sugar's "obliterated place" and the mother-temple she has built there, in all of your words the past days that have rung me so deeply that I could swear I had written them myself. They are the things that slip into the gaping holes left behind, the places where we know we will never again feel whole. To me, they are dark gifts because there is no them without the loss. There is no good and true and sweet and kind without the pain, the grief, the sorrow. They are all one and the same.

And though I have been given a slower way and kindness, I have been given these first blossoms outside the bathroom window

 

and hot coffee, deep bathtubs and a little boy who calls himself Stars,

I have also been given the knowing that today is a love poem day.

Just trust me when I say that there was a time when I had no words. Really. When the words found me again, which took time reaching out past the infinite, my life lit up. And when the words found me again, there was only one thing to write and it was a love poem. It was after Nick Sturm's Lettuce;    Tricia tells you writing a love poem is the purest form of healing. She tells you they bring her heart back to life    because writing a poem is choosing where I want to spend my time, exactly what temple I am building in my obliterated, holy center. 

And so, today, what I most want to be and to build is this:

Sweet Sam,

You must know

you are the thing

that I have been given

over and over and over again

not the first time,

not overlooking the snowy green

not from the anger

      or the illness.

Today

again today just

your grin this morning

your smell on my pillow

your laughter, your whole heart

         how, through all the years and bitter darkness,

         we continue to come back to each other.

Today I imagine our grandmas—

the Sylvias—

playing maajong

in the temple

eating something chocolate

and sending us this sun.

They watch

as we fumble,

colliding against the walls

    of our truth, pretending

    we can imagine

    what our lives might be 

otherwise.

I can see them    shake their heads     and sigh

how ridiculous

how silly

that we don't see

that we just don't get it

how held we are

how we could ever forget

and waste time with

questions with 

wishing and 

worry

their beautiful eyes roll

       the eyes that are your eyes

       and the eyes that are my eyes

       and the eyes that are the eyes of our children

                           who we may or may not ever know

          

because

we've been given to each other.

We just have.

I just know

so cling tight 

to me my bear

let's be glad a while

for this gift

and not forget to say and say and say and say

thank you.

Thank you.