forever is a long long time

Pretty bare feet and shining long hair are easy to love--light-coffee skin and slender waist and smooth face with laughing eyes, too. Flashing grins and fluttering eyes and light-trembling words are easy to forgive. Patience and accommodation are easy to endure.

But what about someday, when the toenails curl and yellow, and babies make the waist swell beyond shrinking, and the wrinkles pile up around the eyes and mouth, and the eyes fade and droop shut, and everything--hair and skin and spirit--turns grey grey grey? What about when the heart forgets love itself, and snappy mouth and bitter words are all that's left? What about when patience drains dry, and selfishness sears black?

What then? Will you still grin down into the dull eyes, and will you still wrap your arms around the baby-thickened waist, and will you still press your nose into the coarse cropped hair and laugh warm against the ticklish ear? Will you still wrap fingers round shaking hands and whisper, stop worrying, I forgive you? Will you still pause with tilted head and dark steady eyes and study the face with intensity meant to draw back the soul, to remind it this is not who you really are?

Will you? Or will it be worth it to you, even then?

zephyrs and buds

Spring
is a little girl
in a frilly dress
whose favorite color is
Green

All these years
     I knew you were the one with all the issues.
                  In fact, you were the issue.
And now
       (good grief)
    I find that was actually me,
                all along.

to be affirmed

I felt it, deep in my bones, the voice saying,
     Yes, do this, it's for you.
        
         But I so mistrust my own hearing.

And then you, standing so close to me,
            engaging the conversation, turning to me,
                        shocked me with the question,
                   Do you want this?
     
           I do, yes, I said with truth.

And then you, touching my elbow with your fingertips,
           blue eyes shining in the sunlight,
                           floored me with the statement,
                I knew, as soon as I heard this, that it was for you.

           I was speechless in the face of your confidence.

           Really?
   I wanted to ask you both.
            What is it about this,
                      about me,
              that makes you so sure it is right,
                           that I am right?

And then I realized
          it wasn't me
                it was His voice;
      that was what made you sure.

  I was overwhelmed with gratefulness that
                 when I am weak
                           He sends me strong ones;
               when I am uncertain
                           He sends me sure ones;
         that He has placed us,
                   each one,
     exactly as He knew was best.

logos

words, under your breath,
and i shiver, for i think
you ask to kiss me.