.
The Answer
.
.
We must be a potion
mixed. Alone we have
potency and purpose still,
but combined is the breakthrough
explosion, the cry of light that
will grind heaven into sparkling
dust we can bathe our bodies in.
Let’s bathe, hand in hand, limb over limb,
relax in shimmering warm waters.
The guilt that was yours,
guilt for feeling responsible for choices
that were not yours, exorcise it,
burn that haunted palace down and construct
a new hut where we can live and make
a clean home in, pure from ghosts
and the blood bonds of false ownership.
I see you alive and blazing,
your chained foot unchained
and the sun warming your back.
I see you with two hands working their strength,
kneading this sick world with your voice
so strong it will spawn revelations, shape
spiritual fires, ladders from lightning bolts, splitting
the wheat from the chaff.
Be honoured you were chosen for this task.
How could you record it if you didn’t live it,
if you didn’t suck in the last
of its shame and suffering threshold,
choke on its dry and brittle pieces of bone?
So suck it in, take it into your bleeding esophagus,
then watch it dissolve, its frayed and familiar howling
vanished into a new-found brightness.
We must climb the high wall together.
Us, as one, or not at all.
That is the commitment of our marriage
– spit and gore, glory and bond –
Eccentric dancers, fierce creators,
our shoulders as swords slicing the pie,
casting off this second mortality,
together, breaking the wind in two,
being born in the space between, landed.
© 2018 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
.
First published in “BlogNostics” February 2019
.
.
You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
.
