free-verse – Page 12

No Feeling

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Rainer Maria Rilke

One day I might be brave and let
happiness befriend me. Then I will know everything
can be trusted to happen
just as it needs to.
I will know that you 
can be overtaken by beauty
and inexplicable peace and
find ways to meet terror
without being devoured by it. Just
know that this is not a secret to keep
but to share: we are all going 
home together.  There is no 
loneliness too vast; each feeling
can become a gateway to what is 
most true, beautiful and final.

He Asks

Have I missed my chance?
He asks too late

I have already packed up
my projections
the people I thought you were
and put them in the bin

Impermanence

I like things spare

Tell myself I'm embracing 
the true nature of experience:
impermanence

In this way I borrow my life
without owning it

Today I wish most
to exhale into no-thing-ness

But no matter how empty
I still have enough to give away

Ring

A wedding ring wields a magical power:
it can make a woman invisible
even to herself

East

I'm not sure what to tell you
I want you to choose this tiny life
this complicated and inconvenient way 
forward

I see my own hypocrisy
and how sure I was 
not to have another
if it came to that

But I bled
and you didn't
so who am I to say
which way is East?

Say

You awake from a sound sleep
or a good enough date
with a perfectly nice person
and say to yourself:
I wasn't thinking
I wasn't feeling

You appear at my door
a little breathless
hopeful and afraid
not knowing if I can 
forgive your error

And I say

Lost

What have I lost 
but the hope
you might be
someone other
than you are?

Convince Me

I'm going to need a talking to
a good one
plenty of sweet words
soft sounds
and cold hard proof
that it is in my best interest
to love you again

All This Life

truth is always a friend
though she often stings
as she washes your wounds
applies ointment and fresh gauze
tells you to stop pushing
look where you are going
slow down and take a breath
she wants life for you
all this life

Truth

Is there a lie at the heart of your life
beating there so long you believe it?

You are afraid to look
convinced that seeing and speaking it
will be the death of you

This is true

Because once you know 
that you could be loved
you will be loved

You will never be the same

That will be the only truth you can live

First published in Visions II (Spring 2021)