...and I will hear you, so says our Lord.
Come down here. Take me. Take me in the ways we always write about but have never done. Take me in your arms. Take me against your body. Take me dancing. Take me riding. Take me to the ocean where I first knew her eyes molten. Take me away from this starry sky beside this abandoned dove house, high above the wrought iron, rusty metal acidic fire escape where I first realized that she loved me, she loved me not, she didn't know me at all.
The words haunt me. They come again and again like they burn in my blood. Every time they cycle again through my heart it beats and they come like the edge of the knife a dream told me to send.
I am speechless. I am also not who you just called me.
And the fast tumble of sorry meant so much less than I thought it would.
I was not raised to forgive this.
“I wanted you.
I wanted no one else.
I thought it through.
I got you to myself...”
Your words haunt me. “She gave me sanctuary. Her home was my safe house. I would do anything... even deny everything I am, everything I was, to have one place that was stable and sane.”
I am nodding my head. Yes. I wanted that. A safe place. A home I could count on to return to. A haven, a heaven, a heart... oh Lord. I can't believe I ever said yes. I walk my laptop to the edge of the roof and let it drop. I can't burn the letters if they're all digital. But the sound of silicon and plastic and steel splintering through the alley is the sound I'm making when I open my mouth and scream.
You have no idea, my dear friend, my sister, how alike we are. How I avoid (shunned even) the labels for so long. I am above them, I insisted. I am woman, hear me (not even close to) roar. It was so much easier. I played both sides against the middle. I danced the lines between this and that, light and dark, wrong and right. I walked the fence. I rode the centerline.
Why did I finally? Why did I finally come to yes? Was it my mind or my body that betrayed me? Was it hope... because it certainty wasn't faith.
I am crying now. But not in mourning. You, my companion, my comrade, have cried enough of those tears for both of us. Six months? Six months you have mourned? My voice bounces back at me. I rip my jacket off and throw it after my computer. My t-shirt: Silence = Death. How apropos. Tear it off, grrl. Tear off your mourning veil. Throw it down. Let it catch fire and turn to ash. Channel all that burning into making love with *your* woman. What Christ has granted you, cannot be taken away. Pull her close and her choice will be obvious between every gasp, every sigh, every time she cries your name against your heart.
Throw it down, baby. Throw it down.
“You got off
every time you got onto me.
Was it wrong
to go along with insanity?”
You will never find safety with man. My father used to say that. I thought sometimes he was telling me something nonlinear and literal. I am a rape survivor. I am a lesbian. Was he telling me something I didn't know about myself then? Something that hadn't happened yet? Other times I thought he meant it as a comment on denomination. The vice grip that holds and twists and mutilates decent souls into not knowing right from wrong. The factories that encase their children in shells of fear so thick they finally combust and burn down everyone around them. Today... today I think he just meant that in Christ we find safety. Not in the mortal coil but rather in the Holy Ghost.
Yes. There it is. The trinity returns to recast herself as a reality in my life, in my heart. The three made one. Father, Son and the Being that lives in my heart and in yours. They are talking now. They know we have laid on the bed when it was already on fire. We bared our everything and worked our hours and bled and sweat and cried and did The Right Thing. Again and again and again. But our reward is Christ. Not a world of man that hands us what we have handed them.
Cry sanctuary, and I will hear you. Let me be your safe place. Build this house with me. Dance this beat with me. Watch me show the world how dedicated I can be. And they thought they'd seen me before. Christ has stripped everything else away and showed me the essentials. Do you see the same? Everyone who robbed you of your confidence has been removed from your life, shown for what they are. They have reared up and you have stood up.
You stood up, baby.
“I guess it wasn't really right.
Guess it wasn't meant to be.
It didn't matter what they said
cuz we were good in bed.”
A shooting star. There are fighters and lovers and teachers and preachers. The best partner is all of those. The waves. That night. The paint brushes scattered on the floor. The growl crack shout of my body waking up for the first time. The knowledge of Christ in the room. The realization of no. We, you and I, share so much – not just wings. I feel we are soldiers together at war. We work the system, run the lines, and know how to dance around the mines.
She tells me your personal myth. She has woven you into the tapestry of her muscles. She says in words, white on black: She is incorruptible. She is bronze and forest eyes, still and quiet and sure. She is passion like flame across my skin. Yes was never a question. When was the question. I cannot exist without her. She was angel and threw herself down for me. I was... so hurt... and she had seen enough. She wanted it done. The damage was done. But the certainty was I would find salvation in her arms. It would take almost forever, it seemed, but the first time... in blood, and tears... breathless... salvation.
She says that you snuck up on her. She didn't know until your feathers tumbled over her body, bare in the blue light of post-midnight. She didn't know until you wouldn't take no for an answer. She cried sanctuary. You provided one without tearing apart her world.
Step outside under these stars with me. The celestial dome is perfection, flawless, effortless in the singular purpose: To give the trees something to hold up. Christ said: I am here because you will never love each other as I will love you. You will never understand each other as I will understand you. You will never hold each other as I will hold you.
There are no lies, no deceptions, nothing but Christ when you hold each other. Keep each other in that truth.
“Guess I stuck around for
all the wrong reasons...”
I am, once again, laying here, renaming constellations. Without my connection to the digital world. Without my armor. Even my steed is far away. My feet, my hands, my muscles and bones brought me here. I am alone. But you are here. I knew you would be. You want nothing from me. You are in my world one day and the next and five months from then. You are not daily, weekly, monthly, scheduled or neat. You are not conditional. You are constant. Now then forever. I name my North Star after you. My fingertips trace lines and curves. I discover hosts of angels in the sky.
How will this story be retold to strangers I will never know?
I cannot deny the smile that slides across my face. Shh. Come closer. Lay down beside me. I have found the Southern Cross above the streets of LA. I have found something, someone, so good for me. All this was worth my discovery of you.
“Singing amen, amen.
I'm alive.”
EJ
