My last two posts have been about gender healing, feminism, and what it means to come into balance within and without. Balance between the feminine and the masculine. The coming together of two aspects of ourselves, and of life.
I don’t yet know where these issues will take me, us, or our world. There is so much more to come, I can tell.
For the past week, I’ve been struggling a bit with writer’s block. Nothing is flowing. So, I thought I would share with you this poem I wrote to my love, way back when we were first finding our way with each other. As I read it anew, it seems so fitting to our conversation about women, men and healing.
…
The Messiness of Human Love
Lying here beside you,
I feel you struggling with the weight of this.
I hear your words and feel their harshness,
and experience them as unforgiving of the messiness of your own love.
As I lie beside you,
Your body says something else.
It speaks in a muffled voice of the freedom it longs for
To simply let go and weep.
It speaks of its most earnest yearning
To let go its armor
So it can reveal the supple fragrance of your true existence.
How I long to know you this way,
And long to show you my own supple fragrance.
Supple body to supple body,
Fragrant heart to fragrant heart
Pressed up against each other,
Close enough to catch the fleeting opportunity to become One;
Feeling and felt, sense and sensed, observer and observed.
In these imagined moments,
We are free to explore each other in the ripeness of the present
Where the touch of our souls
Explodes every particle of the Universe
Just as Love intends.
What is the illusion that lies within,
Telling us fibs about our true identity?
What is this illusion that hangs between us,
Stopping us from knowing each other,
In this most sacred way?
My own rigidity flares when I experience
the clear outline of your boundaries,
But I choose to challenge my own harshness,
For something from within you calls me forward.
Feeling my way along your ridges,
I look for an opening, some entrance into that
Sweet, sweet spot I see so clearly
On my heart’s radar screen.
I know there is a way in.
My fear of rejection suddenly voices its objections,
“Not too fast, not too hard.
Be careful.
We’re walking the line between invitation and invasion.”
I sense the opening I know is close at hand.
What greeting do I speak to let you know
I am here at your doorstep?
What is my heart’s invitation to your heart,
One that I know will find the center of softness longing to accept?
We are like two bumbling fools,
Crashing through the dark,
Feeling our way towards something that is already here in our company.
It waits for us to forgive ourselves the messiness of human love.
…
What if we could just let it be messy?
What if we let go into the unknown, so we might find the place where we can stand side by side, two equals, yet different in our own uniqueness?
“What if we could just let it be messy?”
Sometimes we try so hard to make it perfect that it ends up in the messiness we were trying to avoid. And (in my humble experience) the messiness of suppression is so much messier than the messiness of allowing.
It is messy isn’t it? And that is what makes it wonderful and real and so not the Prince Charming love that we have in our minds as little girls, but in the end, so much better and messy and heartfelt and true.
I’m such an advocate for being messy, embracing messy. I see the others agree… powerful words. Remember when we were kids, messy was so much fun and so much a part of who we were….
sometimes that heart’s invitation you speak IS the invitation to being uncomfortable or tripping and falling down and then getting up… I remember when I was younger, the thought of being seen sans make-up was so scary. “What if my imperfections are magnified?” rather than the grown up me who says, “Yes, my imperfections ARE magnified!”
I am hearing in my ear, “So be it” which is the translation for Amen.
This poem feels like it should be heard with a rousing AMEN.
and, yes… a THANK YOU!
So beautiful. Love is such a messy thing; two souls fumbling in the dark through time and flesh to find one another – to find themselves. Creating a private world to explore truth and beauty with a fearful innocence. Thank you for sharing this.
Good stuff, Julie. Thanks for sharing. I always appreciate when someone shares their poetry..it can be so personal.
I was just asking my therapist the other day about how individuals balance relationships and personal growth. Don’t our needs change? Don’t our desires and priorities evolve over time? It’s so messy!
Thanks for reminding me of the reality of this thing called “human love.”
this made me cry.
thank you.
this is absolutely fitting and an exquisite, savory poem about the most beautiful, desirable kind of messiness.
my eyes are wet with the recognition of the true beauty in messiness.