Nurturing hope

Nurturing the Hope Instead

"Grief can destroy you --or focus you … The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and… the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, [and] you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life."
— Dean Koontz

 

My right forefinger

Finds the pulse in my neck

As my arm drapes around empty space

Where you should be

 

“Where you should be”…

such a simple phrase

except in the ways

it isn’t…except in the ways

That it wears layers

Like a fancy haircut

That came out wrong

Or a special cake

The dog took a bite out of as it cooled

 

Blood pounds

Time tip toes and races forward in turns

And bare feet dance

On old concrete

Peppered with stones, pine needles, frost wedge kisses of seasons and time

 

I see dead people too, like the boy in the movie

Just fewer, more specific ones

And sometimes

I know they are comforted by things

In this world of full moons, stomach bugs, and hair dye that won’t go away

 

We have buckets and backpacks

Filled with hope, good feelings, memories, and foolish choices

They weigh us down, they lift us up, they decorate our world

They make us walk the way we do

With a skip or with a limp, depending on the day

Encourage us to lean toward things that sing to us

Dance lightly with death while praying for everlasting life

 

You empty one and fill the other, or vice versa

Because at times

It may be your vices

That enable you to survive the unpredictable,

Versatile, vicissitudes of life

 

I’m old enough to know

I should not walk barefoot

And stubborn enough to not care

 

I’m old enough to know

That nothing is easy

And few things have Reason

Without your consent

I’m stubborn enough to decide

When I give consent

And how

And to whom

 

So to you,

I hold out my hand

I may trip, I may stutter, at times

But I

Believe.

I see you

And, perhaps,

Better yet

I believe my heart

holds extra eyes

Eyes that judge harder what should be allowed inside my barefoot, sacred, full moon space

 

Here and now, all eyes are staring

Attached to heads that are

Nodding

 

Through violations most intimate

And words sewn into hate buttons on the cloak of my heart,

through what feels like ages slogging up mountainsides

Drenched in judgement, hurt, and shadow shards of broken dreams

Cutting

Deeper

than I ever would have imagined

In any tortured fever dreams of angst and ague

 

There is nothing here

But consent

And I hear a voice

Whisper from deep inside my heart

“Where you should be…

Is where you are.”