Letter, August 12, 2016

I want to touch you but how can I touch you?—you are wider than the sky, deeper than the sea. Yet, despite my inability, touching you is a yearning deeper than my life, more primal than my soul. So I reach for you, always, and I always fail. Yet with each failure I’m a little more open, a little more worthy of your infinite grace. With each failure my heart breaks a little wider and a little deeper, cupping more and more of your infinite grace. With each failure I stand before you a little more naked, yet a little more robed with a cloth weaved of the light of your face. And I shiver like a candle’s flame that knows all too well the intimate secret of the boundless night. I shiver and I tell poetry to go away, for words cannot console me. I shiver and at your door stand holding my heart for a bowl, waiting patiently for the alms of your silence. Ah, forgive me, beloved, for in loving you I forgot myself. I thought myself salt and you showed me my origin in the deeps of your sea. I thought myself narrow and you showed me the boundless expanse of my soul as you stretched my ribs to merge them with your sky. I thought myself alive and living the life and yet when I tasted you I realized how dead I was. When I tasted you I died and into your life was heralded. Now I tremble in your soil, now I spill with your light.

Letter to my Beloved

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