Perhaps

I see the way in which you pull away….not from me, but from the things that bring you warmth.

Like a preemptive retreat, an answer to an old question that burned many times before.

I think that nothing of the sort bothers me because I have been the one that has resigned to the solitude that comes with safety.

I have declared my bravery on the rock face, bellowing my courage with all before me & nothing behind me. Then, as I turn back from the smallness of all the things that can kill me but are full of beauty, I face once more the magnitude of a million dull daggers; the faces & the places that hold sharpness to my achilles. I am a coward once more.

Impenetrable, I thought, as I suspended myself over the hills, mountains or even as I trekked the valley trails.

But here, face to faces, I am overcome by the heaviness of my protections. I lay it down, only to feel the gentle, consumptive gnawing of a dull blade at my hem; weakness overtakes, but only because weakness overtook.

At times, I am reminded that in order to bellow courage, I must feel the compassionate wages of war at my heels. If I must be brave then I must continue to turn back against the safety & the lightness of the world & face the formidable, looming heaviness of a singular You.

Is that my lot?

To amass wisdom, hoard courage; allow myself to bleed & yet, chip away at the scab that forms. “Stay soft”, I sing, melody only forming in my lungs because I cannot breathe. I harmonize question marks because I cannot harmonize periods; endings. Only questions.

My art is to hurt & not allow it to keep me from climbing more mountains, standing over more cliffs, bellowing courage. My art is to praise the pain; to put the heaviness down, to wage war with the resignation that is peace & to wave a black flag : WAR. To love is to wage it. Perhaps I am brave after all.