They said there would be a flash.

A piercing light, a thundering silence,

A creeping, quaking fear as my own wrongs, disappointingly bland, were thrust into the light of an eclipsing love.

But there is never a flash.

I tilt forward into You as if my head were tipped up to the bowl of the sky and I could choose to keep my feet anchored or offer myself up to the galaxy's swirl.

There was no booming silence, no man's reverberating voice declaring eternally this or that,

I spent all this time waiting,

Only to learn that coming back to Your door would feel like the Earth spilling into my hands,

The bones of the Earth clasping tight to my bones,

My Mother holding me up to walk.

I might have come home sooner.

It was never a question of love,

I might have stopped murmuring the words, but to stop loving You would be to take the air out of my lungs.

But they said you kept a list, innumerable wrongs, The petty grievances, the plans made and broken.

I couldn't face you with the the banality of a million tiny betrayals on my tongue.

If I had known that coming home to You would be jumping into the arms of the sea,

Ancient and wide, alive, dissolving all the lists, all the flashing light, all the accusing silences,

Then I may have tried, before, to return.

But I stayed where I was,

Glued to the truths of long days and small griefs and muffling the sparks that rose to tell me to move, to dance, to write, to find whatever is beautiful and never let go.

I am a person of tiny courage, You knew this already,

So it should come as no surprise to You,

That I was happy to stay there, grinding and being ground,

until the choice arose to fall apart or to run,

And, in running,

I stumbled and fell into Y.