ruminate once

mask

I like you best in the morning.
It is then that the mask is still sitting on the table;
battered and bruised from the night before...
waiting to be reattached, reassembled, resurrected and reconstructed
shortly after your coffee and toast.

But in the time frame between bed-rise and breakfast
you are a creature of confidence...
careless and charismatic.
And your colorful words of magic and mystery float away into the rising sun.

Perhaps in the early hours you are still clinging to the unconscious...
freeing yourself from the conscious world of judgments, monologues, tightropes and coloring books
...so that you can be.

I am left to smile upon those tender moments of majesty.
The pauses in my day give me permission to picture your morning-face resting within the arms of imprudence.

I hope that some day your 'mornings' become 'always'.

Rembrant

His heavy lids draped over two cloudy eyes that told the world he was tired.
We saw him, and we felt sorrow.
With weary words his raspy voice shoveled responses to questions he could not answer.
We touched his face, and we pretended to heal.
His ears rang with high-pitched shrills that haunted his dreams and challenged his sanity.
We heard him, and we could not listen.
The smell of solitude lingered in the dark wind that trailed behind him.
We fanned his potent breeze with grace and protection.
He cloaked his demons with vices and vindications.
We judged him, and we called it empathy.

But we will never know the bitter taste of departure that lingered on his breath.
He diluted the flavor with dipsomania and nicotine so that his body would function for those that loved him.
His soul could only find refuge in a dimension less chaotic...
And the battle between worlds came to an end that night.

.

Hey, you know what? I am not angry at you for your broken soul.  I am only sad that the outside world could penetrate what was once your pure vessel of grace.  Perhaps it is in my best interest to dismiss you from my thoughts.  
Eventually my swelling heart will seep through the callus of words that I carefully assemble to make your actions justifiable.  And then I will blame myself for my emotional spill, and you will blame me for not spilling my emotions on you.  Because believe it or not... you would like to be the one to clean things up every once and a while. 

My gurney is not cotton-stuffed, or candy-laced.  Your words will not whisper past my mind. I will not adjust my perspective so that I no longer see what you are capable of accomplishing in this life.
Do not make me feel ashamed of these things... and I will let you happen.

I am not angry at you for your broken soul.  I respect your humanity.  I am only sad that you could penetrate my vessel of grace.  And for that.... you are dismissed.