loving you.

Loving you is like pulling teeth.
Perhaps only slightly more gentle...
quietly extracting the most precious of knowledge.

Loving you is a discovery-
A process, even...
pulling back the unremarkable, colorless husk
to discover the still, silent bud
that sleeps within.

Loving you is the violent shedding
of first impressions.
And the slow emergence of truth.

Loving you might be a little easier
if you would only pull back your drab curtains
and leave me stunned and blinking in the brightness that is you.

But perhaps the beauty in loving you...

is that it's not so easy.

for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

YHWH.

You fill my heart
until I'm so ripe,
I'm bursting.

I lay at your feet,
ripped open,
and I am Yours.

Please,
I am fragile.
Do not crush me.

i think i could hate you if i didn't love you so much.

There's a difference between confidence and arrogance.
There's a difference between receiving and taking.

Your science has not disproven my God.
And I don't believe it ever will.
[10/26/07]

three. nine. five.

Why are you
the only thing in my life right now
that throws me off course?

Tearing after me,
shining your light on me,
and then snatching it away.

How does your light
plunge me into such darkness?

Why does your sweetness leave
such a bitter taste on my tongue?

it wasn't from you.

I received a letter today.
No name.
No return address.
The small rectangle lay mute at my feet.
At first glance,
it wasn't quite impressive,
and was almost tossed aside.
But in picking it up,
my finger happened to snag
the edge of its browned and peeling envelope,
and I caught the gleam
of shining sapphire underneath.
Without another thought
I hungrily tore away
the faded wrappings.
But, settling after the flurry of the moment,
surrounded by the drifting remnants of this frenzy,
I stood silently,
stunned, in the presence of my discovery.
And I find myself, for once,
speechless.
And all I can hope
is that this message
did not reach me too late.
It was you.

stifle.

Every time I see you
my heart clenches up like a fist,
sealing up its many cracks.

Because I know if it didn't,
this feeling would ooze from me
like a thick and sticky oil.
Because I know if I let go
the feeling would overwhelm me.

I stifle the trembling ache in my chest,
since to let you see it is unthinkable,
and to let myself feel it
would be suicide.

But when I leave you,
unclenching these tired muscles,
hopelessly attempting to wipe the smudge of you off of my heart,
only then will it all seep out,
covering me in a murky sludge,

drowning me in the viscid mire that is
love.

At first, I didn't like you.
I didn't know what to make of you.
You were too strange, too quiet, too different.
But now, peeling back these coarse, unremarkable petals,
I have discovered the soft, silent bud that sleeps within.
Can I rouse you, as you have awakened me from my complacency,
ripping me open, tearing through the hardened flesh,
surging through me like an oblivious beast?
Or will you have to discover your own strength,
the force
to will your flower to unfold?