Adding to vastness

My life is
a mother's hands
cleaning cuts
and washing dishes

My life is
a teacher's heart
hearing fears
and cultivating curiosity

My life is
a widow's weeping tears that fall
tiny glass shattered shards
that land silent on a heaving breast
littering it in fissures

My life
moves on
and the question calls
querying trembling arms and soul alike
asking all of me:
How do you love this life?

The words are formless wisps of long
lost dream mists and arms, reaching
and returning empty
so many
times.

The thing is, I don't just feel the tears fall, Love...
I am
the tears.

I see the lives growing, coming, going
the ones that are mine
the ones that I only borrow
the ones I would hold forever, if forever
was a thing

The sight of them sharpens in my deep black
pupils, expanding in the dark
of dusk

There is wordless wonder
in the care we offer each other
man to woman
mother to child
Wordless, ending,
rending wonder

My life is
a tiny opportunity
to learn, notice, dance, cry...
How do you think the vast, majestic oceans stay
so full
if not, in part, for the depth of all our tears?

My life, if it has taught me nothing else
has shown me that this "Love"
is not a thing to avoid.  It is, in fact
the only thing aside from pain that is
boundless

Love and pain: they tie us to each next step, like birth
and a forgetting of where we came from
before.  Another chance
and a loss wrapped into a single soft embrace

It is the entwined existence of these twin pieces,
practically diametrically opposed
Antipodean dancers,
that create us, bring us forth, and cradle us
That give us
Life

Whatever else my life may be
with its deep echo solitude searching,
its wide eyes, clenched fists and racing heart,
its outstretched arms, twinkling eyes, and its lilting,
lyrical, (oft too loud) laughter

it is a moment in which I have the chance
to add a drop or two
to the
vastness
of
All of us.