Shadows of Love

By MJ. Dally

I’ll walk beside you,

I’ll be your shadow of love,

just promise to shed the walls

you’ve built in your skin;

with grime, rust and heavy bricks

of pain.

I know life gave you people shaped scars;

and illnesses inoculated by their words

but that’s just one page of the book

of a thousand; the rest are bright,

if you dare turn pages with fingers

of brave forgiveness.

Grace the guilty sea with one more

of your chances ; open

yourself to the world, again,

it waits with cupped hands this time

and an apology as massive as Saturn.

It will take the wet tenderness

of your wounded soul

and drink it through its muscle

drying you like a child;

and to cry might be elevated

to being an option again;

A pacifier of an apology.

The rarest thing I know

is too feel redeemed;

It feels like feathers finally

bleeding out of yourself

into a sturdiness that lets you fly;

after you were blown out

your nest by fate’s angry winds.

Broken hearts are leaves with eyes

and mouths,

on a ghost tree of suffering

somewhere;

they taste redemption only

when the black tree lets them go

and they fall to a river of time

that carries them forth.

The leaves then learn to smile

and turn green again;

redemption comes in letting go.

I wish bridges had veins instead

of cables; so people know they

really should be travelling in retreat

to the right people, not places;

and I’ll wait where the bridge brings you.

I’ll wait till you are ready,

when you finally speak, your voice

will birth a god with lungs of light;

their breath will unknot our paths

when the sun is too cruel to rise.

You are not the pickle you made yourself,

in sour jars too tight for your flesh,

you are the jaman apples that drank

the earth’s sweet breast milk

and painted sad eyes with color

before you were forced

to jump into brine.

By MJ. Dally