It is no wonder you struggle with me:
Your life is so many rules,
Never to break.
You would not come back to this place where we met,
Where I am now,
You would be aghast at my sitting so close,
In casual defiance (not “belligerence”),
To your friends.
Do not think that it is in defiance of you,
For you do not embody these rules,
These conventions that say I must not.
I am looking for something,
I realized:
I am looking for me, for my place in this world.
I am looking for my freedom from you.
I am looking for the place where joy exists without your face,
Where my every thought is not consumed by you.
And, yes, as you are in my bloodstream,
I wouldn’t mind seeing you.
But I haunt the places where I’ve loved,
My body an apparition of its own
Seeking solace, seeking reason
Defying death.
We are Phoenix, do you remember?
Dying and living time and again;
We are who we are without each other,
We are who we are with each other;
We are who we are regardless of each other,
In every time and place.
The challenge, my dear, is the remembering –
Not everything else
But ourselves, regardless of everything.
That, my love,
Is The Game:
Remember-and-Forget
Live-and-Die
Love-Others-and-Oneself;
It is The-Impossible-Made-Real,
The-Primordial-Paradox-Eternal…
The thing I love most
That you love most
And that, my dearest one,
Is what drew you to me
Is what pulled me to you
Is the soul-searching habit we always are.
“Sometimes, I can’t believe it,
I’m moving past the feeling
Again…”
We are all homeless, my love,
And carry our home everywhere we go.
We are all loveless, my dear,
And carry all of our love within.
We are all empty, my sweet,
That we may breathe the world every day.
We are all unsure, my darling,
And learn forever as we go.
We are all shy, my eternal one,
Kissed by the world for reaching out.
We are always together, always apart,
‘Tis the paradox of life, made whole by love.
I have found myself again, in my defiance.
May you find yourself wherever,
However you go.
*Credit to Arcade Fire for lyrics from The Suburbs
Oceans of Mine 