Just before the first freeze of the season
I stood outside the bleak building where I worked,
Where I had just resolved to leave my mother’s home.
It was not really her home and she would soon after leave too.
She would have to bring down the mirrors
that lined the hallways.
Mirrors that would,
with the movement of one’s body,
Stir shadows in the furthest
reaches of the home.
She would come to paint the walls white again.
Walls that had been green and then maroon and then green again.
The candleholders she would place in boxes and the picture frames in black trash bags.
My father would come to box and carry away the home he had created,
To move it only
a few miles north.
My mother would grow tired of the struggle against a great machine.
She would grow tired of the tyranny of bureaucracy,
Of being held against the will of a woman and her clipboard
And the long claws of the government
And so she too would come to leave her home.
But that night was not about
the oppressive nature of government tenements. And this is not about a burgeoning, a blossoming
Out through the cracks of some grey bureaucracy.
I stood dumb and felt the cold all around me.
I was not thinking of my mother or home.
In that moment I was deafened by music,
Pushed around by a rush of people,
They smiled at me.
I watched the day settle into itself.
It grew old and tired and dark grey.
Wrapped itself in clouds.
Prepared itself too
For the cold to come.
I did not move.
I remember you asked me to let it go when I felt it to be done.
(I asked the same of you)
At once,
The snow began to fall.
The cold reached bone,
my eyes were hot.
Oh moon-eyed one!
Brown like clay,
Made for my fingers,
It was then I needed you most.
It was then I needed to hold you
Like mud to mold you,
Wet as you get
Running down my own flesh,
I needed your scent,
then.
At once,
Everywhere white.
(How long did I stand there?)
White and no part of me moved,
White and everyone a stranger,
White and burning eyes,
White and nothing new.
I needed your scent,
then.
Oh you whose eyes are soft pearls!
Do you know how much I ached in that moment?
I felt you fleeing.
At once,
Everywhere white.
(What should I have done?)
The cold was in my bones.
The sky was dark, heavy
Closing in on my head.
At once,
The crushing realization.
I needed your scent,
then.
I needed your lips, soft as a
Fresh peach.
My mind was on fire.
The snow and the cold and the dark did nothing to extinguish it.
I needed your fire, then.
Always greater than my own.
Your fire I could fight,
Mine consumes me,
Love.
I needed you to wrap yourself around me like you do
Like a flame to strangle the doubt that plagues me.
Has always plagued me,
Love.
At once,
Everywhere white.
(What should I have done?)
White and I did not move,
White and you waiting alone in a parking lot,
White and my head aflame,
White and in my mind you are criminal-I do not know why-
White and shadows stir in the furthest reaches of my
mind.
In short,
I was afraid.
At once,
The crushing realization.
I needed your scent, then.
My chest was ice and my breath stilled in the air.
There were no more people walking by.
(I can’t remember if anything moved.)
In you I found the flora!
Tangles of greenery for my fingers
And I shuddered in the embrace
of your vine.
In you I found the bread!
Buried in the magic of your legs,
I ate of the bread,
Soft in my saliva.
In you I found the spring!
Drenched in you,
I drank deep,
I swallowed you whole.
In you I found the din!
Great sound flowed from you,
I listened to survive,
to escape myself.
I sustained myself in you.
It was cold.
The sky was night.
Nothing to fight the fire,
I followed it to the end,
everytime.
It consumes me,
Love.
Forsaken one, my clay,
I looked for you in that second,
In the endless white,
In the crystal of my breath,
In the darkness that hung above my head,
I looked for your tangles on my fingertips.
I needed you scent,
then.
What was I to know of love’s bittersweet embrace,
That it too can grow cold like a warm breath?
What were you thinking in that second,
Sitting alone in your car as I stood dumb, trembling
(I had begun to tremble).
Everything at once is how it happens-
The trembling and the snow,
The thought of you alone in a parking lot,
Waiting.
Burning eyes,
The sky crushing me beneath the weight of itself.
(It was closing in on my head)
At once,
I begin to move.
The trembling and the snow,
At once.
When I got into the car, you were silent.
(What did I do with my hands?)
Everything around us was empty except in the center where we sat.
A Sermon
of Shadows 