Smudged the Words

Smudged the Words

(You see, everyone will be salted with fire. Mark 9:49)

You cannot argue with the pain, wrestle it into submission,
make it understand the strain it has put on the simple admission
that life was hard before it came along.

It argues with every decision, it pushes you back upon the bed in the morning.
It says the shower will be too cold, shaving takes too long,
and the phone rings far too loud and often.

It buries your memories, mutes your love songs,
imprisons your prayers and incinerates your best intentions.

And then, passing someone groaning louder,
it insists you have no right to complain at all.

It whispers in hidden wavelengths, the way lovers keep
all their conversations to themselves. Invisible, it draws lines
across faces that once played with laughter, walked dogs before
and after a quick lunch with a friend. But jokes evoke silence,
and pets lay their noses on the lap of a human they used to know.

Pain sprinkles every day with edges, every night with dreams
where bridges are burned until morning turns the volume up again.

But pain cannot compete with a daughter’s surprise,
a partner with tears in her eyes,
a friend who sits, and only sits, more of a prayer
than the longest hallelujah or loudest speaking in tongues.
Pain is slain by a son who calls out of the blue,
and shares his dark painting too. And you both sigh
because you know you share the invisible side of a life
that ought to be easy.
Pain is paused when the letter is opened, the salutation
is familiar and the text scribbled so quickly that salty drops
smudged the words. And they stay embedded
in a single corner that pain once occupied as its own.