My little heart yearns for beauty. We look under the winter-crackled leaves, turn over pebbles. We peer into relationships for Saviors. We are soothed by desert rain & the strong, piercing sunlight limning the horizon to East & West as Sol passes over the landscape, also likely searching.

What have we found? At the end of the day, I empty my pockets on the bureau. Some coins, uncomfortable earrings, a phone number scribbled with a name I already do not recall what I promised to provide them. Lately, I have taken to “listening to music” at the end of the day – putting down the book or the computer & just taking in lyrics from various songs. And these are all about love. Even in this dry & artificial way, my day ends with love.

Someday someone will sing a song over me. Someday I will wear that beautiful dress, be a beautiful mess, meet a pair of eyes in a café, be asked into relationship, be invited into the arms of an already dancing body…I just need to hold on a little longer.

My boundaries don’t so much as narrow as entrench. It is more of an effort to cross them in search of. I care less about the shape of my body than the shape of my lonely heart. As the physical condenses, the spiritual expands into a cool cloud in search of ignition. When the match strikes, I will be overcome with love, cast so deeply into the energy I am so ready for & all about.

My fate sits like the cat outside the mousehole. There is no menace here, only mystery. Will I be embraced or tattered? Can either matter? I am as old as I am…my secret passages are shattered by my own hand – always seeking.

I used to put things together; now I pull them apart for the juicy center. Now I wonder if circumcision – cutting myself off for exposure – is the way to proceed. What profit here? Cui bono? Maybe within the secret, smelly darkness where there’s a proliferation of underlife I will find love. For the sake of all holy or hellish, I have stood on the mountaintops of life & scanned the vistas. 

I have seen the beauty, taken in the airs. I have profited experience from the storms at sea washing treasure onto my beaches. I have shaken spears at the menace on the horizon. I have cried into my own arms of a night again alone. I pick up smooth pebbles on the beach, lacking the wherewithal to build my own house. So I dwell in the backrooms of love, never venturing out unguarded.

No more! Now I am walking naked, fat may flab where it may…I am declaring my beauty of soul. I am tearstained, bloody, hungry. I am a menace to myself with this exposure but ask if I care. The blue days give way to white nights. I sleep as though there is a tomorrow to live for.

I am the sugar spooned into the cup of life, swirled about in a dizzy tizzy…scooped up, poured over, sipped & tasted for exotic flavor. I am in love with home sweet home, with home sweet love, with dancing every cell loose from its center. I will no longer behave according to catechism…these words have worn out a welcome I should never have borne.

Before death finds me napping on the periphery of life, I will enjoin it fully! I will take my soul in both hands, put it into the waters of love, watch it expand. I will drag it back to slit it open, inserting my heart. I am here to experience life & I will throw myself onto it in full tackle, bring it into all I am, wriggle with its subduction, its seduction. I am not here to overcome anymore; I’ve beaten at the cat’s whiskers so many times.

Devour me or drive me off, O Life. No more games here, I haven’t the time to be other than who I have become after all these years. Get behind me or in front of me but get out of my way! I’m coming through, Life. It’s my time.