IT’S NOT HEAVEN IT’S EARTH
I always thought you were beautiful. I don’t cry but sometimes I can’t resist & when I saw you for the first time in years I could hardly tell it was you, I thought I wanted something I couldn’t know & I couldn’t know you, I pushed you to the outskirts of my subconscious, the peripheral areas, the part of me that wishes to bury you beneath my conscious mind, the part of me that wishes to have never met you; but each time your gaze turned towards me, something inside of me woke that had been sleeping since I was a child. I wanted you like a child. I was a child when we met & you thought I was wearing a grey shirt on that day, & this remark made me think of the grey button-up I wore to Mass on Sundays as a kid when I could hardly understand the meaning of all the words I was taught to memorize—padre-nuestro-que-estás-en-el-cielo-santificado-sea-tu-nombre . . . I squirmed in the pew I was supposed to sit in & hid underneath the seat & between its legs because I was the type of restless who put himself at the center of a scene; the gold star from the grownup kept me going & short-circuited my priorities around that feeling, inflicting me with shortsightedness, inducing within me something shallow and grave. Hair presented itself in my armpits & all I wanted was for my arms to stop trembling as I aimed and fired, to be still the way a man is supposed to be still, & when I’d playfight and put my hands up I couldn’t be weaker than the boy I was against, & I never was, & through cuts on my lips and bruises on my knuckles I felt more and more a man & I was proud. You said I was chivalrous, like a knight, like your knight, & I liked that because it was something heroic, I knew though you came begging for me to save you, begging for me, I was the one at your throws & so I debased myself for you, hoping to look up and see you, but you were never there—all I saw and came to see was GOD. The moment you disappeared from my life I felt my younger self return, watch over me, & I was proud to see his approval—I cast away the torment, & it all came to a sudden halt, & it was over—& with this I was reminded that we do not live in heaven but earth.
GOD
I had to raise my charred hands to my eyes for me to come to reality. I had to accept my mistake; when GOD sets existence in motion, you can’t opt out of the lesson He will teach you. You must learn the hard way. All is as GOD wills.
