Piles

A smart wind stirs the little piles
Of things that lend themselves
To little piles
At the foot of the mounds
Of brick and drywall and useless hoards
Of (im)personal effects
As people blindly
Weave around them.

You passed the test

Laughing it off, this mess,
Together, a second of calm, and then
A phone call to bring you,
My dear, to the forefront of my mind,
A "WHO IS IT?" and a qualification 
Outside of my understanding of you
In a different, private world suddenly brought
Crashing into this new one
And all at once I was thrust 
Into the forefront of the handling
Of a situation I hardly had the time to realize
Was a situation.

"Who threw themselves 
Out the window?" asked the voice,
Emotionless. 

"What?"

So "emotionless" I met the sight of a man
Roundabout my own age (close
To what yours would be now) 
On the pavement
Alive
And it was said "He
Was lucky."

Maybe not. No one thought
How he'd feel upon waking
To broken limbs and
Internment
After a mad moment comprised
Of a finality and bravery of gesture
That I would best-educated-guess
Had not been his intended 
Ending;

Or perhaps beginning?
One can only hope.

It's time to stop laughing
At the emotionlessness required
Of those in our situation,
And in his, as he only is.

It's only a moment that takes one
From this life into
The hell of the next, be it alive
Or dead.
And those who judge, or throw
Stones (or bodies) have no 
Right but the right
To a private struggle
Without the sort of judgment
We have no right to make.

"Sometimes I feel like whatever god there is
Is testing me."

"Did you pass the test?"
 
"What?" (If I had a nickel...)

"You didn't fall apart.
You didn't run.
You acted with empathy."

Whereas in my mind building a fort
Around myself was a failure.

And I realized it wasn't about me.
It was about her, and him, and them,
And I'm still here, breathing, coping.

"You passed the test."

The "self" in selfless

What broke my heart was not that it was

Too, too full after being too deprived for too, too long,

But that all that I could bring myself to do was

Gaze at you while you let me into

Your world as it was breaking with me in it,

And that I could not move from where I sat

Because I felt that more of me would break you too

And that as you showed your rubbed-raw side

Of feeling selfish, I

Could only counter with selfish inaction,

Thinking I was important enough to make that call

After having inadvertently been important enough

To deprive you of the moment

That would have meant the mending of two worlds

For just the moment, immortal

Now as the moment that I stalled

And will relive and cringe at for too, too long,

Again, unable to let go of “I”

Even when you are the one who

Lets me let that go.

A moment in the sun

Living in my head
To survive the outside of it
I found out, today,
Has become so much a part of me
That I forgot it
Until you sat beside me
And I felt you breathing
So I felt my own breathing
And then there was this body
Next to my body
Absorbing sunlight through a window
I forgot was behind me
As you so ironically (and beautifully) told me
To stop filling the outside spaces
With words
Because I was missing the moment
Of the calm
Of the rare quiet
Of the gift
Of two people in a room
In the sun.

Spark

There is a tiger burning bright
Within the onset of the night
That carries me with all its might
And stranger, still, my soul enlightened

After a fair time of dark,
There suddenly appears a spark
Of light that, ever fearsome, harkens
Better, unrequited fight

For life -- increasingly evades
My understanding, pours in spades
The inability to fade
Into my pessimistic part.

Guardian

In the little spaces of time when I forget you

You’re still there, watching over, like you are

When I am alone and need comfort you are there

As your remembered arms around me

Hover, like a soft wisp spirit,

Lifting me unaware if only slightly off the ground

I’ve fallen to again, touching gently my bruised knees

And telling me it will all be okay, at least, for now.