Ocean

Yesterday the preacher said that god does not have reactive love but that love is a part of his being. Like, he can't help but love us. It does not have reason. He is love. 

I thought about myself. I thought about how people hurt me, intentionally or unintentionally and I go back when there's absolutely no reason to.I thought about a lot of people that do this. I thought of my relationships. Am I mad? Do I think I am god? 

In the past three years I've said more goodbyes than I care to recall and initially I thought, since I have to get used to this each year, it will get easier with time. My heart will get stronger. This is how things work in this country and they seem ok...

It has not. Not one struggling bit. Each time it gets worse. The more I hurt is the more I love.

Am I mad? Am I god? 

Eros, agape, philia, stroge! Name them all and in my being it's a champuru of heart strings tangled in a mess with frayed knots and scarred laces trying to pull it all up together before it falls apart. 

There will be no falling apart here. No spilling. Somehow I manage to twist and contort this heart muscle into a different position so love can shine it's light again. Buttocks in the air? My heart has been exposed to more wind than that.  

I've learned to keep my things though. Selfishly hold them in now so that unlike Ntozakhe Shange, nobody has any chance of running away with my stuff. I keep mine and if you feel like you wanna run, you may go ahead and the wind will chase you. I'm too busy taking care of my things and pondering over this love-god that has no sense to forsake a hypocrite like me. 

So they come,these wonderers, exploring my shores.

I have yet to meet a conqueror. 

Before long though, it's clear that a holiday at the beach can only last so long. A splash to refresh the soul and they're gone. 

I have been a tumultuous rage of squalls in my lifetime, throwing many a ship onto the rocks and icebergs. I had also been a healer of singed souls. 

I don't wish to be any of these things at all. Have I lost my mind? Have I crossed the bar to the far left? Where emotion rules and there is no trace of intellect? Was I ever even slightly to the right? With the calculating fusion that would make me human? Was I ever like that or was I just pretending? 

Or do I keep sliding back and forth, in seasons? 

I choose this side. 

After all, what calculating god would look at us humans and say, hey, they deserve kindness? What calculating love would look at the fickleness of my heart and say, yeah she's never been loyal to me but I'll just bless her to please myself? 

Call me ocean. Kiss my forehead before you go, and smile. I will dream of you despite not wanting to. And tomorrow I will bleed you onto a page for the world to see.

William Shakespeare- Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, 

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle's compass come; 

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

   If this be error and upon me proved,

   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.