My fingers are heavy,
the weight of burying your father,
does not lift that easy,
his loss not felt,
until like misplaced items,
you miss them when privilege of their presence is absent,
when your memory is alight,
with the comforts you once enjoyed,
and are now left without.
He dreamed that the roof of his home,
collapsed when his father,
my grandfather, passed away.
But I don’t dream such dreams.
Instead the walls of my heart,
have caved in.
I feel the constriction,
the deterioration,
and diminishing all at once.
What was once a boisterous and beating heart,
that could be seen heaving my chest,
has turned frail, into a gentle tap,
rain patter on a corrugated roof,
the gentle hum of a washing machine tumbling linens,
the whirr of a light bulb flickering it’s filament,
an attempt at artificially lighting a room,
when darkness is meant to just be.
Why won’t we let it be,
so fearful of what can’t be seen,
is unknown, perhaps not meant to be known.
Our fears abase us and betray our senses to feel,
to let pain carve Braille of guidance,
to use our fingers to caress over our wounds
and feel our way to healing,
to suturing what is severed,
mending and patching our way to being whole.
And this poetry of being whole,
still it escapes the best of us.
We write shameful prose,
of being so apt and self made,
of boastful prowess,
in finding our true selves,
and then crumble like cheesecake base,
between the fingers of tribulation,
and what is left is this gooey cheese instead.
We’re all ashamed of our mess,
so we decorate with sugar,
to make ourselves palatable,
pied pipers of approval,
we all want to be licked that insatiable lick,
that lick of longing,
and lick of satiation.
But here we are pretending,
bitter to the core,
wanting more,
pretending,
we’re all ok,
that the roof of our house hasn’t in fact already collapsed,
long ago,
so long ago.
The roof – our souls, dead,
the father of our very being,
obituary written in the way we act so lifelessly,
so out of tune of what is real.
‘Death is the ultimate destroyer of pleasures’,
said a more noble man than me,
and he tasted it’s fruits,
bitterness on his lips from birth until death,
with loss so grand that should have crushed him,
an example of how to remain erect,
irrespective of circumstance,
dignified and poised,
even though hurt be our way,
healing, illuming the path,
to carry on this dark life,
to the very end with cheer,
gratitude and a yearning to return,
to the womb of our mother Eve,
the loins of our father Adam.
To the elements of the earth which fashioned them both,
with the soul that was blown into them by them same Godly breath.
We’re all from that same breath,
but we’re looking not to catch it’s waft,
but ignore it’s very existence.
Why are my fingers heavy?
Because they know they have not even begun to write,
but this ode has to end.
May God wash your soul with light,
and keep your dwellings perfumed,
with the musk of His Love.
You gave it your all father,
how am I supposed to keep up?
-W.E.
lonerloaner 