Why Do These Tears Come Unbidden?

 

Why Do These Tears Come Unbidden?

(“Salt is good, but if the salt should lose its flavor, how can you season it? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” Mark 9:50)

Why do these tears come unbidden;
the day is full of quiet and life.
Both my sorrows and splinters ache to be heard,
while I keep silent, leaving the world to guess at the
unspeakable.
But my eyes know my secrets the best,
and speak only in water. The salt they shed
only leaves me thirsty
for something more than a mannequin,
someone clothed with blood-infused skin,
arms to float my whole self in
like the Caribbean
warmed and clear.

There is no hole in my heart
shaped like anything: god, friend,
success or smiles. It is too full,
overflowing and never empties itself before
the tides replace yesterday’s sorrows.

A hug full of sweat might replace
the tears that have watered the sad
and sunny years. From all appearances
there is nothing troubling to be seen.
But if my mouth spoke of the errors and
regrets
that have boarded my windows and
buried my assets so deeply below the
foundation of everything ever offered,
the day would sink even darker and my pain
would never cease.

Sometimes boasting and begging aligned like
an eternal eclipse. Sometimes the aching was
the blackest hole, the bottom of the abyss.

If there were one or two; no, there needs to be three,
so my bets are not hedged, I would tell them everything,
write it out, let them read it, then burn it on the fire of
a snowy day.

If those three would remember, more than scores of years
from now,
not to mention what only the eyes can speak, and
give attention to the day when

All things being equal

I spilled the contents of memory before I
finished my quest.

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.