Turn To Me with Your Constant Love

Turn To Me with Your Constant Love

(“Because your love is constant, hear me, O Lord; show your mercy, and preserve my life!” Psalm 119:149)

You might be surprised to hear me telling
all my truth. You might think less of me,
you might look with disgust,
as I let flow the maladjustments that have followed me
from my youth.
I tell half with honesty, half with hope.
I write with symbols, I read with stops where I should
continue until the entire story is told.
Addicts never love brutal honesty;
the best of us don’t want to hurt those we love;
the rest of us quake at our reputation being more of a
government announcement that the check is in the mail.
For now, perhaps until evening, my eyes are undry,
there is a tremor in my hands, my voice chokes, and
I maintain constant vigilance that makes me feel like everything
I’ve said and done was just a cruel hoax.

I do two loads of laundry a week, and some of my jeans
are now torn at the seams. I could wear them to do yard work,
if I did yard work,
but I have nothing to wear to do the hard work of winning back
the man I thought I could become too many decades ago.

It would be easy if, just writing carelessly now, each transgression
was forgotten forever. But we are not made that way, are we?
The memory circuits stay active, the trauma rarely expressed.
I should have sought professional help, I should have gone
to the wilderness with one ear or two who would hear my
truth in its entirety. That is no one’s fault. I make no excuses.
But words I read creep beyond the fences I’ve built to keep
me from seeing the judgement in the eyes of someone who might
become my enemy. I’ve lived, every epoch of my life,
with this systemic aberration. There is no one to blame
but myself. And I know that loathing is the last thing my
lonely soul needs.

I’m looking for the one friend who I can spend afternoons with
telling my ancient stories and truth. Someone I have not hurt so far,
someone, some day with hooks in their soul just like mine.

Turn to me with your constant love,
let me confess the failings that still come
fast-mailed from the past. I have lost the trust
I once had. I am tired of being a hermit, tired of recusing
myself like a hobbit in a cave. Meet me for drinks
and we’ll see how the conversation goes.