Love's Casket

love?

I shuddered when he said the word

I used to know love

back when I knew pain

I tried love then

and love served me well

for a time

until I let love carry me away

then love

right when I felt highest

let me fall

and I broke

love stayed with me

claiming to nurse my wounds

rubbing on ointments

that felt like salt

I pushed love away

and without my feeding love

or encouraging love

love died

I laid love to rest

buried love

in a casket

under the ground

“so you see”

I told him

“I no longer know love

love is dead to me”

“dead to you is different from simply dead”

he said

“perhaps love is only waiting

to be awakened”

could it be

that love had been buried alive

and that it might

still live?

I was afraid

who wants to dig up a casket

in hopes of finding a living soul

only to discover a corpse?

he left me alone

he couldn’t dig it up for me

this was my task

my choice

I sat at the graveside

as I watched the sun set

and before leaving

peeled back some of the turf near the headstone

the next morning I returned

with a shovel

and began to dig

trying not to wonder what I would uncover

as the sun rose

my sweat and tears

turned me into a muddy mess

I stopped digging at noon

my shovel scraped wood

and my whole being throbbed

I could not go on

so I sat and stared at love’s casket

until it began to rain

and the water from above

rinsed me clean

of all the grime of the work

I watched it pool on the exposed wood

mesmerized by the concentric ripples

running into each other

and off the edge

the water finished the job

I had begun

and love’s casket

lay fully exposed

I took it up

still afraid to open it alone

and took it to him

a gift

a sad gift

perhaps nothing

but a moldy box

full of rotted memories

I couldn’t watch

as he pried open the lid

but as it gave way

I couldn’t take my eyes off him

and when his love met mine

my love began to revive

like mouth to mouth CPR

simultaneously intimate and dangerous

it hurt

but after knowing

the paralysis of self-protection

I found that the pain of living is unparalleled

***

From the book my heart poured out by Jordan Aspen