When Friendship Sails Away

2 a.m. Thoughts

I am words melting from the pen

A soul setting out upon journey alone again

Watching for sinkholes in this new present

& tsunamis in this new future

On a horizon that quivers with change.

 

Life can be a lethal dose of hurt

Delivered to internal organs

Like the heart & liver

Like the lungs & sinus cavities

Like my wobbling brain you label “stupid”

You, someone I thought had my back

& a blanket of forgiveness to wrap around me

When I’m dragged from the floodwaters

Gasping

 

I didn’t answer the open-ended question rightly

“Do you know about the base?” she asked…

Well, I know where it is & some of what it purveys

In its deathly business-as-usual way…

But I didn’t have her answer. Nor wish to take up

Her standard of battle.

 

I didn’t remember a name out of context

So a blade of Damascus steel I’d not time

To parry was thrust into emotional vitals…

In aid of what? Why can there be no slack

Among old friends? Why does my perfection

Or its lack matter so much you must pull it from

The pole I had such a time erecting?

Does it serve you to trample it in front of me?

In your knowing, holy way…the priestess of

Right, the princess of who you think I should be.

 

I have held back so much from you of

Your perceived imperfections, in feeling

These thoughts would serve no purpose

But to wound.

 

Your definitions have no such compunction,

Eroding into attack, I must so deserve

For all I cannot do rightly.

 

You say to guard my inner child as you

Push her into an exposure beyond deserving.

What did I do to you?

 

I know. I know. I’m trusting in an almost comic way,

Like Peanuts trusts Lucy to hold the ball.

I sink for the third time as you remonstrate with

Me, while clutching the life ring, “You should have learned to swim

before you fell overboard!”

 

It’s ok. My heart has been renewed before.

It’s just an unexpected wound & hard to treat

With my limited edition first aid kit. Attack from

Any quarter can be unexpected, but this one caught me blind.

 

I wipe the raveled sleeve of care across my face

And tuck it under my head to sleep.

I wake from my own sighs,

To find life lost & love ground into

Such fine dust, I have no way in this moment

To render it to life.