Love Resurrected - Part 2

(Listen here for the soundtrack to this piece)

“…a core foundation of a loving practice, cannot exist within a context of deception.” - bell hooks (All About Love)

You are my final ego death. I now welcome the tide clawing back the love lying on the shores of our once tethered fears. The embers of Palo Santo erase the fragments of you nestling in my memory. I stroll alongside the ancestors clearing the smoke and mirrors of your deceit. You used to walk alongside me, always in the footsteps of the tyrants before you. I never noticed those worn grooves until I took my first steps without you. The sands that consumed us now fill the spaces of your gaits imprint. Our end was really your end. Our love was really the dream of trauma.

Fear did not destroy the house love built, awakening from imagination did. The shattered mirrors once hanging in our home reflected a vision too sharp to grasp. The cool breeze of our late spring meeting made your stuffy airs bearable. The weight of hope quelled the lies dripping from your tongue, your recitation of facts curated in the image of your reality. Litigation excised a love that has left a beauty mark on you though you insist on long sleeves now, even as we begin a new spring apart. Always protecting, always hiding, always distant.

Your ego insisted intent where impact bore a hole. Your insecurity lay over my pain, quieting me with fables where you are the prey and I am the predator, I believed you. Your eloquent melodies were the soundtrack to our slow dance into oblivion. As the walls of our love returned to dust I was sure they would settle onto our roots. I was sure they would become soil for a new season breathing blooms. Conjured ideas always feel sure within the worlds of our mind. You were never a sure inhale, steady exhale, or safe space to meditate; your words a constant objection, your actions at war. Love waited, gently and patiently. Love opened the door to a mourning sunrise as you lingered behind. Willfully confined to the familiarity of chaos, you’d rather write epics of your imagined heroism than awaken.

I’ve cleansed the brushes carrying the painted lessons from you soaked in its fibers. A voyeur to the paint wrapping its love inordinately across the canvas, I learned the lessons were never about you. The home house we built can never be destroyed for I am love resurrected —I am the home love built. I learned to trust the concrete I meticulously poured was cured and stable to create from. I learned an offering of marigolds to a warring soul finds a closed fist where open palms should be. I learned a false self always suffers stage fright when presenting beneath the eye of authenticity. I learned a future predicated on warm vanilla scented hugs, grins pried open with tender words, and settled shoulders calmed by steady touch is not a forgone conclusion unless one is willing to begin again.

And so, here I meditate on all that I know.

The earth runs through my hands as I prepare space and plant new seedlings that will mature into nourishment. A pen callouses my middle finger as I deposit ink onto the page dyed from the wisdom of evidence. The misshapen shack containing what was is laid to rest, tucked into a subterranean slumber no longer at war trying to withstand the weathering. The grounds catching my pace give way now, no longer stopped by the hardened asphalt of false hopes limitations. I am welcomed back home, to the house love resurrected.

___

cover image: “slow dance” (1992-1993) kerry james marshall