Poem: The bird outside my window

There is a little bird’s nest outside my window.

She is the most beautiful creature I know.

To some, she is only a songbird,

but to me, she is known.

Sometimes she steals the softest threads from my pillows—

(How she slips inside, I do not know)—

and with that white, weightless cotton

she lines her home, warm against the night.

Sometimes I hear her sing when it rains.

Sometimes I hear her stir at night,

arranging her nest high in that tree.

I sit within my house, but I wish sometimes

I could be her—

aloft, above, free.

Winter came, and I have done the worst things. I invited the song bird in.

And look where we are now:

Chase, I cannot be in love.

I am lonely, and you cannot leave me.

Chase, I cannot be in love.

When we clash, it is flint on steel,

and my heart is the anvil.

Sparks fall,

and one could kindle fire,

rage out of control,

and burn you until there is nothing left.

Chase, I cannot be in love.

I run from you in every direction,

yet I cannot leave.

Chase, I cannot be in love.

Wherever you go—

in this life or the next—

know I will do the most terrible thing to you:

love you.

And Chase—

please, stop smiling.

Beautiful.

I try with my heart to explain a possibility of love that one has never thought.

Close your eyes.

One who can not find love anywhere, at anytime, does not.

All you can see is what you know,

what it has been.

But it is hard to see what it will be.

Close your eyes to what you know.

Listen.

The natural rhythm—

the heart, where all energy begins.

Listen to your own.

Listen to mine.

That is all that’s truly there.

Without them, none of this would exist.

Now open your eyes.

Look at me.

There is no part of you I do not love.

Every toe, every finger,

every brow,

every falling eyelash.

Love is a responsibility.

Chase—

we cannot touch.

For love, even in the brush of a finger,

is the limit of one becoming the limit of another.

When the divine touched us,

it said:

you have come to your limit,

we have come to ours—

and still we outstretch.

What is trust?

Trust is a handshake.

I have my serpents,

you have yours,

yet still—

we meet again.

And because of that,

it is sacred.

“And then”—

by trusting one another,

we bring “and then” into the world,

a world rigid with faith,

while we remain fragile.

As lore has it,

we are a desert people now.

They cut us off from God,

from water, from love,

from integrity, from respect.

But look—

here it is.

This is ours.

If you listen,

and the wind is right behind us,

you will hear children for the first time.

You will hear animals.

You will hear people

discovering their own voices.

This is ours as well.

And they know what happens next.

Chase speaks first…,

You are a queen.