I will ride:a poem.

You bid our love be slow,
Measured.

A thousand hopes come
Galloping
Up to the gate

A beginning.
And then, too soon,
An end.

What's this? A mask.
A pretense.
A game.

The truth, my almost love: a lie.

For another love
to you
is true.

Lies of omission
Are still lies.

The gate locks.

But hear me
When I say:
Hope will return.

And I will ride. Watch
Me, or don't,

But I will ride.

Wherein:a poem

Wherein I think you are the one:
You speak my language. Describe your life as I would my own. Your hopes, your dreams. Your longings. Your views, your values. The way you spend your days.

Wherein I realize I’ve been trying too hard:
Very hard. To be something. Amazing. Witty. Beautiful. The way someone who doesn’t know she’s beautiful is beautiful. The way someone who doesn’t have to try is beautiful. The way a child sleeping is beautiful. Or a mother giving birth. Or the moon.

Wherein I tell you what I wish I could say; what I wish you could hear; what I wish:
I have loved you forever. Since before forever. And I love you still and always and ever more. Never was there a question of if, never a question of when. Only still. And always and ever more. I do not know the lifetimes or the circumstances or the lessons we have conquered, and it doesn’t matter. There is an openness, a realness, a truth. A connection between us that reaches beyond the need.

Wherein you have a heart:
A broken heart. I say this because the desire that fills me is to bring you to life. Wholeness. Completion. Have you felt this before? And while this desire is compelling and urgent and everywhere, I wonder about it. What if: my desire is about my own need for wholenes? What if: my desire is to be fully alive? In my own heart. My very own whole heart.

Wherein I find myself in your bed:
Face in pillow, hands above my head pushed against the headboard. There is no making love, only easing pain. Your cruel father, your dead mother, your long lost daughter and every lover that left and took with her the ragged pieces of your ravaged heart. I am not them, but I am here. There is no kiss no sweet no tender. You take me not for bliss, but for erasure. Elimination. Forgetting, numbing, dissolving.    

Wherein I pay attention:
To the pattern, the story. I am noticing: I am angry.  And still, my whole heart loves you. And still, you are beautiful. I am beautiful. And still, this is living and this is real and this is a truth: this is waking up.