Brink

Where do I begin? 

Where do I begin…

and where do I 

end?

I have found myself asking this question a lot lately. In the vast expanse of chaos and chorus and reason and rhyme I have been feeling like a half-deflated mylar balloon adrift. A feckless and reckless child throwing sand into the wind. And in that act of innocent insolence I lost my footing and fell off the seesaw.

What are the words that I can use to unravel this mountain of broken bricks and shattered bits that I’ve managed to bury myself under and ask you to excavate? I muse the idea of the Houdini act; flash of light and smoke and poof, I am but a specter… a mental splinter that lingers but is impossible to extract.

Exhaustion. 

My mouth runs dry, my already fevered cheeks flush with shame and humiliation and hope. I’m trying to sleep but I know I can’t before these words are down and inscribed upon this digital tablet from Sinai.

…

…

…

My courage eludes me.

I can face down the darkest corners of my mind and bear pain that breaks me and yet this is more than I can carry.

Fuck it. My six stars never cease to guide me.

Mine has been a lonely road.

For nearly a decade I have been alone.

I’ve had a few lighthouse souls that have stuck with me through the years,

but thanks to the growing complexities of life…

we’ve moved apart.

They’ve gotten married, they’ve had kids, they’ve become distant pleasantries.

Yet all the while I’ve managed to stay running in the same circle

at the bottom of the same dark hole I’ve called home for too long.

I’d grown close to members of this lunatic-saint family. But I always stayed at arms length to protect the cracked bits of porcelain I have left.

And then this celestial alignment occurred

and these six stars erupted into 

clear focus.

These exceptionally unique and dynamic and beautiful and bruised warrior-poets came 

cascading into my life and utterly

changed

my universe.

Such magnificent presence broke through the

veneer and alabaster 

that I’d shaped around myself and the part that I’d

buried,

my capacity to love and

let love in was cast into the sunlight.

It was like trying to wash your face with a tsunami:

I was and still am overwhelmed.

I am so rusty and unfamiliar with that part of myself that I let my demented mind start a 

Spy versus Spy series of misadventures

with my emotions.

I couldn’t fathom what I was experiencing without trying to simplify it like fitting the correct shapes into boxes.

And this dynamic… it is something in all of my years and all of my travels… something I have never experienced.

I love you, because of you. I love them all, because of them: the poet, the stoic; the young sun and the nurturing moon; the bonfire and the beacon.

I have lived a life with what feels like naught but pain and sadness and carrying those scars alone. But I am not alone anymore,

and I am terrified of losing that.

I live in the eye of the hurricane. I see the beauty of the sky and the storm, and yet at times I am overtaken by it. But I cannot always outrun the maelstrom. 

I have lived in dread of that.

As long as I can remember.

Yet when I am with you, I fear not: you are the guiding lights in these unknown waters.

You remind me of who I am.

You remind me of who I want to be.

I will always give everything I have for you,

because you have given me more than you know. 

I am beyond the point of sorry being enough.

We have given ourselves to each other.

You have given me…

…hope.

To quote:

“The Bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but respect and joy in each others’ life.”

-R. Bach