It’s Always Only Love. {poetry}
I can’t sleep.
Even the bed,
worn and crinkled,
and dampened with sweat,
becomes a rejection
of everything I am.
And the storm that started
hours ago as a lighthearted rain
has quickened,
maddeningly,
lashing now,
and showing no sign
of passing by.
She invites me into
her unfurling movements
filled to the very edges of all things,
with grace, and I submit,
because I can’t think
of what else I can do.
Ask your questions,
the storm tells me,
making sounds that shake the bones
but ensure that I am rooted here,
where I’m afraid to be.
The storm knows
that I still need to ask questions,
even though I’ve had hints
that there are other ways
of reaching truths.
She knows I still have so many,
and they arise often,
so I tell them to the howling wind,
like this…
Why am I always seeking and what am I looking for?
Why do I always feel I am falling?
But why am I afraid of this, of falling?
Why do I always feel there must
be something more to all of this life?
Why do I feel that happiness
can only be found elsewhere,
and why can I conceive of happiness,
but not actually have it?
Why is the mind so strange
that it can form questions
that it can’t answer?
What is the nature of nostalgia,
longing,
missing,
that it floods me with feelings
that have no object?
Why do things feel more broken than whole?
Why do I feel lonely?
Why does it take me until the very end of all things
to realize that all of this has everything to do with love,
and only with love?
The storm takes me in her arms.
I can actually feel the warmth on my skin,
despite the raging nature of her essence.
She tells me that it doesn’t matter
how long it takes to come to love,
because love isn’t going anywhere,
and will happily wait until it is recognized
by every single one of us.
“Even me?”
The question is tiny and frail.
I am a little girl again.
“Yes, even you. Of course, even you.”
The tears and the rain mix together.
I keep talking to the storm.
“Have I left any kind of legacy?”
I ask.
I guess I’ve only ever wanted
small things, less even,
than I thought.
Just quiet days for reaching in,
deep inside,
yellow butterfly love surrounding me
until we are the same thing.
*****
Tammy T. Stone is a writer from Canada and is currently based in Japan. Her words and images have been widely published and she is ever-traveling, ever-learning. You can follow her ramblings on her blog.