How I’ve mitigated these great fears
Howling at my threshold
Unnoticed and ignored the years
Before this foothold.

Now the wind has torn the shutters.
I search the storm in vain
Through littered banks and gutters
For any piece that may remain.

Creeping cold that bites at me,
Distrust at every turn,
No sanctuary inside of me
No rightful place to discern.

I search for splintered timber,
But I’ve wandered farther still,
Than I could return, or remember;
My path rolls on downhill.

My little cabin I’ve indwelled
Reduced to burning wood,
And all once standing, now is felled,
And all maligns the Good.

Now I yearn for quiet snow
To frost this filthy earth;
To change the things I think I know,
To give unto hope rebirth.

How little consideration
I ever gave the wind
When I thought my habitation
Protected me from sin.

Another night of endless pain
Pulling me from the deep
Piercing jabs of mortality
Strangulating my sleep
Reminding me, reminding me
This life, we cannot keep.

Another night of endless pain
Forever on the brink
Experienced, I tread the wave,
Exhausted, now I sink
Under these churning, tempest tides
My body is forced to drink.

The moment I guess it all began:
They taught me the opposite of man
Is woman

And who I became was decreed
By who I could not be,
Where I could not belong.

It seemed hopeless,
Opposites, not in symbiosis,
But in diametric tasks

With some necessary exposure,
Friends close, enemies closer,
And a marriage between the two.

I’m grateful for these years I’ve spent
Finding the two complement,
Not contradict

But I still ground the definition me,
Not in who I am,
But in who I could never be.

Forgive me, friends
When silence falls
And marble walls
Again defend,
Again shut out
The broken spin,
Fatigued again,
And plagued by doubt.

Forgive me, friends
If in your lack
My lamp goes black,
Or I offend,
While my eye is bad
And only sees
All I cannot do or be,
All I can’t deserve, yet have.

How halting these words
Come stalling their meanings,
And I fault their being.

Some of these cracks outdate me,
Others so fresh I smell the grain
Still stained by fate.

Lift the head, stay on task,
But the downpour never stops,
And I asked for it.