Crack, crack, crack

Crack, crack, crack,
goes the sound of the broken,
breaking down.
In the silence of the truth
When looking up
Gave me ground
For knees to buckle
And fists clenched,
white knuckled-
Could flail and and shake
and finally open
Only to find
they had been holding to nothing.

south of the border

I have a heart that broke
Just south of the border
And it can’t get back
Or speak the language
But they seem to understand
every drunken slur I utter
from the gutter of the street
where I curse love and stutter

please lift me up
and out of the slum
that is not my heart
but the rubble of sadness
abandoned long ago by parts of me
that knew better
and moved on to Higher ground
and greener Pastures
staring down onto the left behind
parts of me and saying

get up, get out of the gutter-
speak your language
be a lover
not a drunkard intoxicated
by sadness and brokeness
and all things that shred the soul
like colorful glass
and shiny, tiny sparkles-
shards that shred the palms
with which you reach out and up with

folded in prayer and wrapped in grace
in a wounded place
now safe
not broken
south of the border
where the language is love
and everyone is fluent
where shiny, tiny sparkles fill with sun
and tears are like rain
creating a rainbow
washing the brokenness down the gutter
that you pulled yourself from
just south of the border.

ten feet away

I suppose that no one but Love could want me in all of my naked, weak, brokenness….

That’s what I was thinking while laying alone in the hotel bed. Actually it was, no one will ever want to marry this naked, weak, brokenness that is me, but then that was quickly quashed by the realization that it was my ego talking. That knowledge made nothing better. I just cried harder. I felt so vulnerable laying there, naked and crying, holding my stuffed bear to my belly…at the age of 38, still trying to hide it and hold it in….hiding and holding. I think people who know me would say that I’m an emotional person. That I have no problem expressing myself. If they only knew. If they only knew that what they witness is just the tip of what stays here in my core and leaves me curled up on the bed, holding bear and hiding. If they only knew the naked, weak, brokenness of me.
Love knows.

Laying there knowing that the Queen has me tight in her grasp and feeling my anger boil up and out, again, towards Love…I came here to write. I knew that he would be back with my breakfast soon. I knew that I could not be found in full blown hysterics. I know that I cannot share this fear and knowledge, this bad day, with him. I cannot. Things will go wrong. Mistakenly, misunderstood, misinterpreted and mis-everything elsedly, wrong. I hold it in. I hold in what hurts because it will hurt him. I think on some deep level, the one that is crying as I write that, that holding in what hurts to keep others from hurting, is what love was to me. So much so, that some part of me still thinks it is. But it is not. I know that. Yet,

He sits just ten feet away. He is on his iPhone. He is eating leftover chinese. He cannot see me here, crying. He cannot sense that I am holding anything in. He is not looking up. He has no idea that right now, I am sitting here, crying and writing this. He is ten feet away. No one travels this journey at the same pace. Where are we going? If all there is, is now, where in the hell am I going?
Now. Eckhart Tolle would ask, what is the problem right now?
Pause. I don’t want to think my way out of this. I don’t want to continue down that road where I feel better. I can feel it calling me and I am not ready to go there yet. Earlier as I was getting the laptop out and lecturing myself about being all that I need, and that nothing “out there” is going to give me what I already have “in here”, and while I was saying that Love does indeed love me and that I need to stop grasping and clinging and live in the now…just as I was trying to convince myself of what I know to be true, I received a text that said,
“Just so you know, I love you.”
It was Love’s way of saying, you’re right. I do love you. You and your neurotic, bad day having, weak, naked, brokeness. I love it all and maybe ten feet away isn’t noticing you, but I- Love, I never take my eyes off of you. You get what you give. You give here and I will give there. The text was from my friend Barb…somehow the Universe and the planets aligned just at that time, at my broken time, and gave me love. Love knew what I needed and when I needed it most. I am humbled by my lack of faith. I wish that I had more of it.  I wish that Love didn’t have to prove itself to me all of the time, and or, that it didn’t wait until I was at the cliff’s edge, sometimes already falling, before it did.

Ten feet is such a long way to fall when you forget to spread your wings.