I know I have seemed angry to you,
standing here naked in all my clarity
and perhaps as if I have no pain or heartbreak.
Nothing could be furher from the truth.

Truth is, the little glimpses of remembrance
drove the sword straight through me
and plunged me into waters too deep
then for me to traverse. 

Sometimes I think I imagined it:
the letters and little books of study
you started sharing without me, as if
you were hell-bent to do it all alone...
The way you missed the beauty in me, in you,
worshipped another, paying the devil his due
(Is that what you told yourself?)... The way
you built up decades of ivory towers around
another's little lie, adorning it as truth,
beginning to believe it yourself as you believed
all their versions of who you were
except the one you knew was the truth.

I wanted these times to hate you but instead
fell deeper into remembrance and, though I clawed
at the walls of sweet sleep and life's forgetfulness,
loved you through such pain and chose to remain,
to be true as much as I could do 
to the clarion call to love.

Even when I watched the way you cut your own heart out
and tossed it out along with me, seeing it and me
as just another fish in life's raging sea, I could not
strike in anger you in whom I saw me
once upon a time, fighting to be free,
not seeing clearly I already was
when I chose to rest in life and grace.
And peace... ah, yes, peace, that elusive quality
we both longed for and knew nothing of
except in those moments we knew above
and below were one and the same
when placed in the context of that name.

In those first weeks, when you lay sick, giving yourself
over to powerlessness in the one place, propping yourself
up as ruler of men in the other, I was pulled
to pieces by scrappy twin lions that seemed
to fight endlessly in you, neither one true .
They ate me alive slowly, until I realized
they lived and roared in me and I lay down
as a lion with the lamb, resting
in the great I Am.

And then you pretended
that alll was well on the one front
as on the other you made someone else
all too willing to play along to be your queen,
enslaving yourself, and by extension me,
to a world of darkness, pulling me under, eclipsing
then not only the beauty of what was ours
but what was meant for my little lion
lost in the fray when I lost my way,
imprisoned in darkness so many years,
seeing only you through a billion tears.

My days became a living hell, something
I vowed not to tell because I wanted you to find
your way to seeing clear all the contaminants
you cast upon me, muddying up the world
we came to cleanse and purify.
I wanted to die but only just
to be born again to love,
not seeing yet I was strong
and I belong and who I am
is not wrong and could never be denied
by life or I lost to illusion and confusion.

I did my best to rise up from that place,
though I see from here I still looked to your face,
desperate for you to arise too and remember"
it was always and is still about the way
we are meant to serve first by seeing one another
with deep love and, washing these sins away, leaving 
the long arc of a detour from a love most pure
and make our great return to one another
and to the Holy One.

There is a clear path now
and I hope one day you see you there
and know you are so worthy of making your way, 
arising from the waters that have seemed too deep
and putting aside the former things.
Behold it now: what is right there
within you—all the blinding truth
that could change your life completely.
Listen, listen for his voice, and turning
to this moment, forsaking all else,
make a choice to turn toward home.

You will find me, should you desire to seek
to find and know me, right there, on the way,
beside you. In time, when I see you 
from a distance making your approach
I will drop everything, no matter what or who,
and I will run with my arms open to meet you.
And we will laugh again. This truth
will set us free.