Stars Pouring Milk

Stars Pouring Milk

 

I want to see it the way you are seeing it.
I want to hear the sounds of your hidden scars.
I want the silence of a corner booth,
a glass of wine and piano music playing
songs we do not know.
I know it is not the way you planned it.
I know it seldom is.

I would add your pain to mine,
I would join you in the cloudy thoughts
that seep in so unexpectedly. I would
sing you the lyrics we both forget so well.

I want to hear your hurts, though it may be
I have heard them one thousand times before.
It never matters if you repeat them,
it never weighs on my mind.

Your story is my story. And I guard it
in the archives of my heart. Your sadness
is my sadness. And I see it like stars
pouring milk across the midnight sky.

We will sit until your hands warm up,
we will talk until our hearts beat to
the same rhythm, the one the universe
gives in ebbs and flow of seasons, tides
and ocean waves. We will weave our stories
together,
a quilt of crazy choices, and someday laugh
at everyone who never showed up
when our faces were red, and we bled
in front of them all. We, you and I,
will stay far later than last call.

I want to sit back and sigh. I want to
never
say
goodbye.
I want to defrost the fear and
find the few who do not care
that our stories have such sad chapters as these.

I want to know that, between every slowly pronounced
word,
lives a prayer and a love that is always heard

In the silences we wish other people had seen.

I Wish You Would Walk with Me

 

I Wish You Would Walk with Me

(“And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you whole. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.’” Mark 5:34)

I wish you would walk with me, I wish you knew me,
I wish you would walk to the unseen city with me.

I cannot see it yet, though the crowds chant its name.
I have watched for its gleaming alabaster piercing the sky,
I have heard the words shouted like a hundred spears
to drive demons away.

And twelve years with the same unknown pain has
slowed my pace while others went ahead on their own
pilgrimage. My courage sinks as I see them disappear
across the hill-spotted margin of the trail.

My face is not disfigured though my brain is tangled like pasta.
My eyes are not darkened though they burn like fire.
My music comes slower, my voice has no power,
my days are on rewind, my nights project images
of ghostly winter trees, fingers snapping when the ice
weighs them down.

The detours are as lonely as the singular path I have walked
for decades. I bring up the rear, or turn back, or aside and
can only be reminded that I have cried in wishes, sometimes
in faith that misses the point. And the pain stays; one of
the few companions
that are not afraid of the unheard words I long for.

I wish you would talk with me, I wish you got me,
I wish you would listen to the silence in the dark with me.

I wish you would hear me or heal me. I wish you would
keep me company.