view it from the sky

Looking down from so far
I see myself with an invisible burden
It is not a bucket, nor a backpack
but a malformed parasitic growth weighing
an unknowable amount

It is, for now, a part of me

View it from the sky and you will see
there is no one else who could carry it
even if they would
even if I would let them. 
This is mine
Like his love was mine
Like his future should have been mine

The road is also
unknowable
the length, the time needed to traverse this
particular trail
Are things over which
I have no control.
I control my steps, my forward progress,
sometimes I control my breath.

And in the shadows of my lonely journey
Ursus creeps along, somewhat beside me
half hidden in shadows
easily mistaken for
any number of things

His scrub brush back
black lump outline lumbering through the underbrush
does not threaten me
he is a grizzly cheerleader pacing himself
to my slow and steady gait

when I fall, when I cry, when I beat my breast and tear my hair
He stops to watch.
Help is not the objective.
The objective is observance
What is seen, cannot be unseen
What has been done, cannot be undone

A thing that is made, may be torn to pieces
but the image that burns its shape
a red shadow in the black of the back of your eyes
remains

I can close my eyes and feel him there
my powerful totem
His unseen presence, just beyond reach
just beyond scent
just beyond me
still guiding me, offering courage.

Knowing I am followed by fiercness
confers courage to my beating-too-heard heart

Courage that is quiet, till I can't contain the screams
Courage that is swollen with two hours of torrential, tears
Courage that cannot always smile, and snaps and yells, pulls inward

Courage that sings and walks and gets up off the ground
Courage that puts one foot in front of the other and so keeps moving, regardless of speed
is courage just the same

Especially when you view it from the sky