No ending can wound me

more deeply than living already has.

Oh god, this life beloved and cruel,

has carved its name into me with a blade of air.

(what remains for death to take?)

When I was a child, the world opened wide

a wild, alluring abyss.

Since then, everything has been shadow play,

a memory of that first astonishment.

The soul is quiet now, almost a stranger,

its voice only a whisper through dreams.

I have stood on this earth

feet blistered, hands unclean,

and I have learned the weight of soil.

I have loved the way men burn,

as if desire were a truth, they could swallow whole.

And though love is endless in its failure,

it lingers

a smoldering restless tide,

pressing itself into the contours of my thoughts.

I can sense grace drifting through the air,

restless as a dragonfly searching for light.

It pauses in the soft curve of a wrist,

or in the hollow of the cage–of-ribs

where breath trembles, waiting.

The solitude

of the vastness I cannot touch.

I would give everything to know it fully,

even if it breaks me open.

Something

fierce and untamed chants from my marrow.

It is a creature without a name,

crawling toward the impossible

a horizon where the sky bends

and the raven drifts to meet its own reflection.

©Gesso Cocteau

Art and Poetry