my beloved

Bell hooks said: ‘When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear - against alienation and separation, the choice to love is a choice to connect - to find ourselves in the other.’

And I think we’re all

A little too afraid

Of doing just that

Afraid to dive in with abandon

Submit our bodies to the thrash,

The crashing froth

And pierce our hearts on jagged rocks

To shed our skin

With no guarantee

Of another

Love is to suffer

To die and be born again

To be turned inside out,

To be changed.

It lives just under the surface

At all times of day

At dawn,

Before the light breaks

And the blackbird sings its song,

In this blue hour

That calls out to me.

Love prickles and pulsates

A wondrous, heinous thing

Inevitable, or some say, fate

But to reach it

You have to reach within

Then out again

Take lessons from the trees

Crawl across the canopy, embrace,

It is a choice you make.

Once you’re amongst the waves

You must keep kicking

Not give in

To fear

To let it drag you away,

Love is

Active not passive

Taking turns to walk over hot coals

A never ending trust fall

And of all the things to do on this earth

Is the most noble

Not to love?

*

A part of me lives on in you

I feel it.

A phantom limb.

It whispers my name

Once the sun is set

And tells me I have much to gain

From the undoing

To keep pressing on

And let myself be unstitched

By love

Only love

What else is there?

*

Once the fight drains out of me

Once desire is no more

I’ll take my body to the ocean

And let it end this war

Between soul and form

So often at odds

So many creaks and cracks

And endless painful spots

Yet despite myself

I stop to admire this tortured vessel

And it’s pursuit of love

Whatever the cost.

What a tender week my heart has suffered.