A Place That Makes Sense

A Place that Makes Sense
for L.

I felt your presence there, my friend, well before we touched,
Standing guard outside my house for months.
Truth be told, your confused soul reached out and keenly touched my own, as if in recognition.
Almost the moment we met last year as comrades, I knew, without a word from you,
That you too are searching blindly for a place that makes sense.

If you were to take my hand again…
It would force me to own years worth of lies I have told myself
And wade through the reeking mire of wrong choices and right choices that went wrong,
I would have to pay homage to every heart I broke along the way,
And fully acknowledge my own role in the breaking of mine.

I would have to lay the comforting presence of insecurity to rest,
Relinquishing all ties to my role as a victim of circumstance.
I would have to do whatever it is I said I was going to,
And chance actually meeting the higher power I claim to serve.
I would need to own the limitations I have placed on my spirit.

If I held you close, it would be my own soul I’d see reflected in your gentle gaze
Meeting it, I would have to find compassion for myself
Loving your trespasses, I would have to find ways to forgive my own.
If I accepted the full depth of your warrior’s heart, I would have to admit
That mine has never been filled to capacity either.

If you were to claim me, I would desire to surrender my will to you
If we make love, I have to accept that you are stronger than I.
If you take me up into your arms,
My spirit strengthens from your touch even as my body trembles in fear as I am shattered.
For broken and naked is how we are delivered into our new lives.

I feel you there now, your troubled soul casting a shadow on my life as you stand behind me.
Your own broken heart is stirring awake, yearning to be made whole again.
Searching, you look backwards and South instead of to the East
Where the sun could be rising on a new day for you.
But even if I could lead you home, it means that I would have to claim this place as my home, too.

If I ask difficult questions, I must be willing to unquestioningly accept the answers I am given.
This place, the answers I received, made no sense until I felt you in the flesh
Caressing my hips while you drank of my soul from between my thighs.
Each kiss drawing forth a confession that stripped my defenses away
Even as I surrendered to the fact I was just filling in for what you really needed.

For this is what loving should be:
If I dig a seeping spring in the field, I should brace for the torrent
That will flood the basement and release the dragons living there.
If, with humility I plant the seed and hope for the best, I should be so rewarded;
As to have the field overrun with ripe grain, bursting with the energy of all that is good.

To accept your loneliness, it is my own desert I would have to cross.
If you had stayed, I would have had to stop running away.
I would have to face the bittersweet truth-
It would be worth all the pain I could endure, to bed the man again
If, upon waking, I get to hear the little boy laughing again in delight.

If you were to take my hand, I would be absolutely terrified.
But I’d find a way to stand my ground
And somehow, some way, be there for you.
This I know to be true,
Even though nothing else in this forsaken, sacred, proving ground of a place, is making any sense.