When I complained to my mother about fearing like I wanted love too much for it to actually come willingly to me, I invoked the saying, “A watched pot never boils,” to prove my point.
She replied, “I bought a see-through teapot so I can watch it boil every day. Sometimes, it is just about telling the universe that you want tea.”
someone I did not see
AmwritingBeliefBelieveCanadian LiteratureCanadian PoetryCanlitCreative WritingPoemPoetryReligion
I never learned to love
someone I did not see.
I learned to love
the stoop of my grandmother’s back
as she rinsed clean her fingers
of beets as red as blood,
for a table pregnant with love,
for a family troubled as any.
I learned to love
the smell that clung
to my grandfather’s stark fingers and yellowing
beard,
and the way those fingers
could provide flats of wood
for my imagination to carve
in an instant. The way he took nothing
to be worthwhile for believing in,
except for effort
and learning.
I learned to love
the voice of a woman
who was born from the womb
of generosity. She hated being photographed
but gave you a spotlight
for every moment
you dared exist
in her orbit. Her gift
is her giving
is her religion.
I may not be religious. May not
speak with Gods or Goddesses at night.
May not eat the dish
of your particular despair or hope.
But I know love. I know it in my tongue:
how utterly luscious it tastes
with all its desperation
and grit.
I never learned to love someone
I did not see. I learned
to love
the grit
of trying to love
the imperfect things;
the real people.
now, no place
Before you,
there existed a place
(inside me)
a room.
Unplastered.
Under construction.
Young kids
without fear
would come and
graffiti the ceiling.
I would scrub
and scrub
with a wire brush
until my cuticles bled.
Still, shadows.
Echoes
to paint over
but I’d know
would still exist.
Now, no place exists
without you.
You are the perfume
in the rooms
of my soul. No
room without your
essence,
no wallpaper untouched
by its rosewater,
leather,
late afternoon weather.
A memory embedded
in my present sight,
touching everything
with a soft shade
of
“yearn” and “require”
What graffiti?
What echo?
What hurt?
You are the room.
There is no
living in this house
without you.