By Now

By now you would have held one in your hands—a stone, a shell, perhaps a bird, dead or injured, or some other thing that once lived but now does not. You feel something throbbing in your fist; a memory that is not yours, yet somehow seeps into your skin and spreads through your body in your blood. 

When I was a boy, I collected shards of broken mirrors, hid them in secret places, let them absorb the splintered fragments of the world until these things were infused with magic. When I was alone, I placed these shards on the grey driveway, arranged them in patterns that came to me as if I were remembering a ritual from long ago. 

Sometimes I held this glass so tight it would cut into my palms and blood would seep from wounds so straight and razor-thin, like the line that separated me from the world of others. 

By now, you too would have held something in your hands that cut and drew blood—and did you release this thing, or did you tighten your grip? There are those who squeeze harder even when the ache is so great it threatens to annihilate them, like one of Rilke’s angels; luring us to the depths with beauty. But beauty is not, as he says, the beginning of terror; beauty is the terror itself, contained in all things if we look hard enough. 

Only, there are no angels, and beauty ravages without need of an agent. So what is this thing you held, what is this thing you could not bear to lose?

We think that what we control cannot control us. 

I hold you in the darkness of our bed, I hold you tight, trying to contain what also holds my heart. It slips through my grip, falls like your black hair strewn across my chest. I want to contain this thing that rings in my head and fills my dreams with storms and long voyages over open, churning oceans. 

When I was a boy, I anticipated this and captured beauty in broken mirrors spread across my parent’s driveway. With every wound the reflections of the world entered my veins, and the magic of the world, and the mystery of the world—the beauty, the suffering, the anguish, the joy; all of it filled every cell of me and swelled my little mind, my little soul, my little heart.

And here before you, I finally see; my little heart anticipated you.