CALL ME BELOVED

What is there to do?
What words do I choose,
four years later? I’m all broken
into pieces, sifting through shards.

My statue has crumbled, already –
Pieces splayed out like thoughts, sounds, memory,
maybe I can be a mosaic, soon – I could
reassemble these limbs into something new.

Now, I’m a tree with too many limbs
but no birds left on the branches to sing,
not since you came into the world and
made it larger than I can handle

all at once – thought, sounds, memory
tumbling down, my marble, a mess of mosaic
spilled out across the floor. What are the words
for pain like this? I’ve heard doctors call it

ex·quis·ite · [adjective]
      1. extremely beautiful and, typically, delicate
      2. intensely felt
but my bones aren’t broken, just aching and
ten lifetimes too heavy. Just delicate. Not beautiful.

How can I describe crawling towards worthy –
trying to understand how one life can break
me to pieces, make the world erupt just
by coming into it – simple love like fire burning

spilling out like sunbeams through thin shades, like
shattered tiles, spilled out across the floor.
Maybe I could find the words, again –
reassemble them and explain anew.

What else is there to do? Nothing left but
borrowed time, letters I’m assembling into
a vessel worthy of witnessing love like you,
worthy of borrowed time. Maybe your candlelight

could be mine, too – your steady glow
showing just barely through the cracks, golden gleaming
the way sunlight bleeds through the horizon, unstoppable
impossible bright – deafening, blinding

warm. Maybe the breaking is what it takes. Or
it’s not a shattering at all, but alchemy – lead into gold,
melting down and cast into something new – steel
quenched and stronger for the forging.

But what words (haven’t found them, yet)
explain pain like that? The forging leaves scars,
still – white hot while melting down to some
exquisite boiling deafening blinding, but

what else was there to do? I sift through pieces,
hold them to the sun – impossible warmth –
shining through (like you) golden seams,
shadows and color twisting across walls, the floor –

I’m broken
I’m whole
I’m broken
I’m whole, again