Tim’m T. West for Red Dirt Publishing © 2008

the weight of this loss
if almost, but not quite
the real thing
is coequal
to the weight of my surrender
if a decoy of the alpha particle
the nucleus around which I created
a universe, a “life”
if an axis
an imaginary line on which I grounded
belief in a good God
and these
are reason enough
to not
“just get over it”.
there is no direct proportion
in this aftermath
every day
since he stopped wanting to want
the life I believed we once imagined
i have loved him

have you ever said goodbye
to hundreds of people who loved you
because you loved someone
enough to say goodbye to many
as surely as you were prepared to say
“i do”, to one?
burden the car
with the mass of
things that matter
books, pictures, music
memories
the uncertainty of forever
a test of good faith
the scent from his last visit
the impressions left
that shortened the distance
between time and space
the echo of
Oleta Adams “Get Here”
or Sade’s “Kiss of Live”.

the dream remains
electromagnetic
love, a centripetal force
affecting good sense
like an eye
over the hurricane
is something meant to be
and not
those who, like me,
choose to weather such storms
pick up the remains
and make do
but we do not flee
some things
some people
are just made that way
to not
“just get over it”
can a raisin in the sun
become wine?

those who have never
loved like this
who’ve never felt
the crest of surrender
in the pit of their stomachs
who guard, calculate, caution
the heart’s trajectory…
yes…
they more easily walk away
they “just get over it”
but none of them have loved
with the surrender
if careless
that I have
with the intention
of trusting a catch
in the fall
and none of them
have gotten back up
bruised, broken, and disoriented
for accelerating
for the cumulative perfecting of faith
so many who worship God
do not trust God
as I have
the Christians tell me
of someone who loved like this
I think I know him better
than they
understand that path
if not moved by pulpits
evangelical pageantry
or gospel about him

this forget me knot
in my stomach
is far too familiar
with waking for the love of him
moments to the year
to deny the force
of all the beautiful lies
believed
the amplitude of
this heart’s oscillation
like a pendulum swing
pushed by the smile of him
so I will take
all the damn time I need
to achieve balance
again
I will own
all the love I still feel
because I don’t believe
in lying to myself
to save face
appear hardened and unbothered
if unable to cry anymore

and someday
the force of gravitation
will not be as thick as
the escape velocity
the desire to love again
and be loved well
by somebody, I believe, loves like me

is the inevitability of hope

so I will try
(again)
as surely as I do now.
this is how I’m made
I am a man of God
these are laws of physics

We held each other tight that night, uncertain of what the months to follow would bring… but certain, at that moment, of the gravity of our commitment. We slept so heavy and with such urgency that we failed to hear his alarm inciting the drive to Houston Int’l for my flight to CA to teach for the semester. I didn’t mind. I suppose it meant more time with him. And although we rushed to make it… he was with me… I held his hand while he accelerated, not unlike our hearts, as reassurance. I can’t imagine having it be any other way. He, after all– and for all my denial and downplaying love as a motive– was my reason for being in this city I’ve come to call home: Houston. I resolved with a parting kiss and half-certain that it made sense to leave, that the next few months would be about the determination, however clumsy, of a man who wanted to make his beloved proud. And in doing so, I perhaps failed to see that he was already proud of me: mistakes and all, imperfections, broke, jobless, bump on my forehead, multi-tasking talents and absurd intelligence… i was still already alright with him… normal enough, good enough, handsome enough to be his life-partner.

Well… the months between August and December have been a hurricane that IKE had nothing on… and perhaps those winds of change stirred up some “stuff” that was always there, beneath the surface of our resolve… about our assurance with one another, about our “fit”, about the way all this loving landed us here… longing and broken a bit– trying to sort out how to continue our love beyond the miles and temporary distance. When I mentioned my beloved’s name in classes and at marriage equality rallies, when I placed pictures of our smiles on chapbook covers and on office doors, I imagined that i was doing enough to evoke his presence. Perhaps I took for granted that he wasn’t as resolved as all those people i worked so tirelessly to convert into believers… that black men can love black men…and work through the stuff. In loving, all isn’t perfect… but there is honor in the trying we do to get it right, to forgive, to love anyway. I suppose I’m still trying. I know that I will smile that way again.

The distance increased the storm… and at some point, he broke. Nothing I have been able to do or say has made any difference. And I have seen sides of him that I didn’t know existed, as reasons to accept the fate of our ill-fit. Still, I have never felt so hopeless in my life.. wanting to try; believing part of the time that if it was meant to be, it would be easy… and the other part of the time that maybe our love had run its course. But there is an imprint, a stain of remembrance on my heart that will not soon go away. So today, as I pack and grade and focus on my return… there is a small part of me that hopes he’ll awaken on 12.20… perhaps earlier than he had planned, but in time enough to greet me the way he left me… with a kiss (even if just a friendly one) as a way of saying… “I haven’t given up on us…”

As I type this, I know how this kind of wild imagining, this wishful thinking, is probably what landed us both here in the first place. But there is something pure in it. It’s not meant to hurt… It’s the bold and unburdened courage of a child who believes he can walk on fire, fly off rooftops, move mountains. As we get older… we lose faith. I’m still a but fearless, if stubborn. I believe that there is unfinished business… even if that means we sort out how to be friends. I know that I want him in my life… and not with the burden that our conversations have become since the break: logistical, brief, lacking compassion, if cordial. Anyone who experienced us know we have seldom been cordial with one another. Passion was the marker that made believers of everyone else it seems. Sometimes I miss that.

And I know Jones-West is wishful thinking, but I am nothing if not honest with myself about my feelings. So today… I’m still in love with him. Today my name is still hypenated and my mother-in-law is still Ms. Pat. Today and perhaps not tomorrow, I indulge in wishful thinking earnest enough to claim it… to someday release it. God will take care.. of me, of him, of us… whatever that means.