That is the moment,
for you who love precision,
when one sharp pain too many thrust upon me
broke my spirit and left me dangling. That is the moment.
I could recite for you all the other dates and times 
and shadowy back rooms if
you wanted me to but 
what would it matter.

You were too busy
engaging one another, creatively,
to care to see what was slipping away eternally.
Saint Paul himself would have been stunned by the
turn of the screw and magic makeshift thorn,
penitence produced, diversionary roads
and things that go bump
on the darkest nights. 

You were no doubt unaware
of the irony or the agony, the date
circled round again, as in 1996 when 
I buckled over and caught the edge
of the restaurant table while you walked over
for a touch of silver-tongued conversation and I
was forced to see into this future in a flash
and sipped my soup, pretending
not to know you, not to know you would 
do this all over again to me.

Your dirty little secret
and the shame you polish
as you refuse the grace of which you speak
so eloquently, they will not steal my joy.
So when I walked through the valley
and stood before the throne, approaching
boldly and with confidence, bleeding
all the same three weeks later
and in such pain, the 
angels came and sang.

As they had of course that year.
Or did you not know? Did you not see?
If I could speak, if I had words would I dare
to care for you who care to dare, tempting
the Lord your God, pushing him into a corner, 
then turning around and diminishing him
as if he were the Great Satan himself
standing before you, your spirit dead
not simply broken, making the other
your god and a god of punishment at that
to help you believe your lie.

Would I say, "Let's have a conversation
that matters"? Would I lay down my life
here gasping for my life's last breath
as I was that day happy on my way
when you yourself attacked me from behind,
stole my story and my mind?
Do you not know I know?
Did you not see I see?
Do you not care?
Will you not dare?

So while words have left me again
and I have no idea if they ever shall return
I do know Love is God and God is Love
and it survives the longest lie and requires not
that this human spirit survive this long life.
There is a song that rises above the pain
along with the perpetual sting of death.
The song speaks of angels bending low.
Or did you not see? Did you not know
that you too are of Love and born of Spirit,
belonging no more to flesh and bone
and daggers in the night?

One day, face to face, we shall behold,
bright shining as the sun, the one, the one, the one,
and all three of us washed clean, radiant,
standing in the sun of the holy One,
and all of the piercing moments gone,
pure spirit restored, eyesight clear as that first day,
the first moment we two knew we were
created in the image of the life that flows forth
and the first birth, born of the one light,
we two who belong to each other
and the One forever.