To Share Your Wounds

To Share Your Wounds

(“Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” James 1:22)

I’m surprised at how late I’ve shown up to some
of the appointments I’ve had for days. I should have
been there earlier; I should have greeted you distinctly.
It had been on my calendar; I transferred it from the same
date last year. How did I almost miss it this time;
how did it nearly escape my notice?

Some days my thoughts are spattered through a sieve,
they are scattered like dust in a storm. I think I have been
protecting the damaged corners; I think I am hiding
where words cannot find me.

I used to visit the hidden hearts who carried more pain
than I knew. I used to capture everyone I knew by name
and carry them to brighter fields in the sun.

These days I sit and listen; I do not have much to say.
Sometimes the words flow right past me and I turn to
see them fly away. I could not catch them with the
whirling motors of my mind.

But I’ll give you the few lucid moments I have saved.
I’ll make room for you within the dusty remains of the day.
I’ll buy you a beer and turn my ear to hear the words you
long for someone to remember. I know you’ve told the tale
a dozen times or more
and that merely says the story is not yet complete. But
will it ever be?

I have so many unfinished rhymes, so many leftover notes
for songs I never wrote. But we can dig together, can’t we,
to the bottom of the proverbs that have sunk beneath our
unknown perceptions of time. Today I will find a way,
if a way is presented to me,
to share your wounds if you’ll share mine, and we may laugh
before our time is over.