To the steadfast
The reliable
The open-hearted
The ones who give and give
With whom I never have to pretend
Whom I need never fear
To the ones who brighten when they see me
Laugh at my bad jokes
Appreciate what I am
The ones with whom
I am safe
The ones who are
So easy to love
Thank you is not enough
But it’s all I have.
You are my shelter
In a windblown world.
The morning sunlight
blissfully tangles itself
In your sleeping hair
nearly transparent
your fingertips lit through
warm orange blown glass
Some people have been hurt so deeply
They no longer know how to accept love.
They have been repeatedly wounded
Until fear overwhelms them.
Their defenses scar shut.
They can’t bare their hearts to trust again.
Even these can find small salvations.
A lover, a child, a persistent friend
Might break through,
Might prove to them
That love is worth the pain.
That humanity
Has beautiful faces.
That they belong.
That they deserve
All the good things.
You who have always been there
My first and last loves.
You have seen what I have seen
Struggled what I have struggled
Felt my pain, lost my loss.
You balance me.
Anything I can’t do, you take the task from me
And I will do the same for you.
You see the future I see
Before and behind us are parallel paths
With enough deviations
To give us something to talk about.
And we talk. And talk.
I could spend days locked with you in a small room
And come out smiling.
We share humor. We share darkness.
We oppose one another
Only when we feel the other needs correcting
We lovingly correct one another
Delivering the hard truths.
When you’re here, I am the most myself
When you’re gone, I am writ lowercase.
You fill in the gaps.
Without you,
I am halved.
Life is full of gains and losses.
We live, we love, we lose,
We find new loves to lose.
Sometimes we pull away from them,
Sometimes they pull away from us.
People ebb and flow
In and out of my life.
I want to keep all of them
Forever in my arms
But I can only hold
This many
Off the ground at once.
And if someone struggles to be put down
It wouldn’t be loving
To refuse them.
Sarah D. Silvey 