2. solace

first you must know that you are loved, there 
is no place we can journey together without 
this truth firmly clasped around your waist

you must stuff your bags with its weightless
provisions, stuff your pockets with its unending
un-condition, sew its name in your seams so
you can never be lost from the soft slip of its
belonging

and with your insides lined in its promises, like
ligaments protect the delicate force of bones
from wearing on one another, it will cushion
every ache and confusion in its hushed
baritones

do you know what being loved feels like
in the pull of your smile
in the slope of your spine 
offering its unwavering body 
to the whole weight
of your rage
your questions
your need

when a right placement of admiring eyes, of
hands in yours, like a key clicks open your wild
belief there is nothing to be earned or longed
for that isn’t already gathered in patient
reverence beneath your every holy step

next you must know you are never alone, but
this is simply the inevitable spilling over of our
devotion, an adoring chin tilting to reveal the 
unquenchable gravity of love

you and your beloveds who choose to dance
the specificities of time and space must learn
to inhale and exhale the nectar of each other’s 
company, to pluck harmonies of enduring love
from the sticky strings of grief and wanting, from
twisted tightropes of loss and mending

but your beloveds who dwell where space and
time tumble over each other like twin toddlers
before falling asleep at the creators breast, are
always at your side, if you will have us

next you must know your body is a mother board,
medium of creators mind igniting each delicate
web of matter hungrily seeking its next masterpiece 

the wet clay of tomorrow is always in 
motion in your bent palms, there is no 
unhitching its current of pure potential, 
its fountain of rippled melodies lifting 
the orbits of your heart field into form 

there is only asking which blueprint of reality you 
are dripping the golden honey of your faith into,
how the architecture you’re wearing of what is 
and isn’t possible grew inside you

who’s exoskeleton of distrust presses like
a shield against the chaos waters of your
becoming ? who’s clipped wings have you
heeding a thunderous warning against flight ? 

we can’t draw the eternal of our children’s
imaginations til we have rebuilt the looms, 
til we have offered every rusted and creaking 
mantra of not being enough

and when you are ready, only when you are
ready you must come to know death as
beloved companion

she is no thief come to snatch pieces from your
heart, nor hound come to gnaw at its tender red
meat, she is no haunt come to rip its delicate
cords, nor bully craving your heart bruised and
beaten

even on days her chariot is forged steel, death
herself is simply return, churning beginnings
from a thick bog of ending

and like shaky legs on dry land after riding the
roaring sea, like a thatched roof between a soul
and the downpour of its living, a cocoon between
the bright wet strokes of a body 

death is simply home, a rushing welcome through
the whole breadth of our rest