Why do you do it?

​You fall so quickly,
​so ignorantly,
​so completely 

& pull me down

​after you, &
​I fall further.

​I fall in love
​alone.

​And there is nothing I can do
but wait where no one sees me

for the light to come back.

Why do you do it?

​Why?

I love you.

You are so
​infinite;
​bigger inside than any spirit place
I ever encountered or 
​knew,
including God.

​(because I'm sure I never knew him)

Unknowable,

​Like you really.

​I love you.

I forget & so do you.
You forget with me &
​before me & for me.
& then I remember 
​what I should
leave forgotten,
but you 
are purer.

Not polluted with:
I should
or
I should have
or
​I must
or
I can't
or
​I mustn't ...

​You have more faith than I ever thought possible for a hole in my chest.
​More faith in life & people & goodness & love & the future & yourself & even me.
​More faith than I ever hoped to live on.

Much
bigger
&
stronger &​

​I love you.

Like falling on rocks.

Slippery, wet rocks, smelling of slimy seaweed
& broken barnacles
with the water swirling around them
& coming in and going out
to quickly.

Sharp scratchy places that make you bleed

So that you wonder what you're doing out there

& you remember clearly seeing how beautiful it looked from the quiet beach

& how you thought it would be better to stand out there closer to waves

& this is how we learn not to go out to every hard place that sparkles in the sun.

The fear of death will do that for you.

...

I am sure I have believed that I'm most afraid of people.

But, perhaps, people don't scare me as much as they should.

Not enough for me not do go out to the hard sparkly places.

From The Others in You, Me & The Others
Link:  hard-places.html

Do we hide our souls in things
to keep them safe till after our hearts leave us?

Do we always know that that will happen?

Is mine hidden in the dry, powder-white-brown blades of grass
I remember stabbing my feet in summer?
Or in those cracked hot pavements?
Or the bleached-baking tar roads
gravelling in the light & dark?

Maybe in the hot sand, sinking away as I
pushed up that same dune for the hundredth time,
or in the broken barnacles
stabbing and cutting while I breathed 
the salt and water deeply, into
the lung hollows under my heart?

Can we loose our souls through our feet by accident?

Did I hide a part of my soul in that sagging, rusted fence that
I never forgot seeing those huge bugs with the unrealistically long legs
crawling through?

What a strange place to hide a soul.

& what about in those white flowers?  The ones with the egg-yellow centres that hung heavily at my sister's front door & I never learned the names of after all those years because you don't have to call things that are close?

(It's funny how I remember most things best
with the souls of my feet
and some things only with the backs of my
eyelids)

Maybe I just left my soul in the air.
Hanging like the prayers of a thousand years hang in the Notre Dame;
like a cloud of pollen dust being blown from the field 
into the forest, slowly, still visible with the other lost souls bumping up against 
each other there.

&

Maybe that's where all souls go.

At the end.

...

I look for my soul more now;
now that my heart has grown stronger & harder.

The softness of it is rarer & more beautiful to me.

(part 8 of 'Nightlife'.  A night poem in 10 parts)​

​8.

I sleep.

All my day-dreams surround me,
​whispering,
talking,
​laughing
at me, mingling
​with each other and folding
​ridiculously fluffy egg-white fantasies into the
fairy-cake mixture
carefully,
not beating too much,
keeping the air in:

​bosses in my kitchen and
children's voices:  mine
​and Me
in my pyjamas
on the school's front lawn - 
a navy blue sky
at midnight signalling the end of the world and stairs
going nowhere in the dark
​         Dèjà vu dèjá vu dèjá vu dèjá
vu ...

​Reality escapes;  stirring.

​9. ...

​from 'Nightlife' in I sleep, I dream (night-life.html)

Heaven is ...

Lying hidden
in a sleeping flower
Holding another soul's
feet
tightly
in all my own,
as they hold mine.

Both covered
in a gravelly blanket of
pollen-dust,
fast asleep without ever
having to close
our eyes.
Seeing only inward, until
the sun rises.

Heaven is ...

Sound in both ears.
Only a heartbeat and the warm sound of
blood rushing on,
in
one.

Mostly a voice,
as you
rise & fall
with the breathing between
thoughts,
in
the other.

Ears,
so full
that they overflow to your heart
and fill it up to your eyes
and lashes
and all of your love
flows out of you
through your hands
and lips
so that you are empty

to fill up again with only
sound
still coming in through both your
ears.

Heaven.