Totality
First read at The Decentered Arts Open Mic at the Faight Collective in San Francisco
I experience you as me
Me as us
And us as the entire universe
I think I understand it now, how everything is connected
You cover the palm of your hand and wiggle your fingers
See, you say, we are separate but we are all part of the whole
I look at your fingers, members of this thing we call a hand
The thumb that started our evolution,
forked the path that led us to build tools and cities and towers and gods
Shaped into symbols for language,
held steady in silent prayers
clenched into fists raised in solidarity,
raised to defend the things we can’t bear to lose
You drag my neck to the side
Your index finger searches
Tracing muscle and bone
Goose poked skin, greedy tongue
Seeding nails grip and feather
Pulling me into you
Into the space beyond the walls of this room
Where we concede our stories
Where there are no bounds between breath and stars
I want to hold this moment
To cup it in my hands
Set its warm glow in a place where I can find it when you fade
To believe when the sense of us is lost in the darkness between words and actions
One flicker that says I love you, I am here
To a heart that can still hear it
I have come to see our totality as a miracle
A place where the moon bowed before the sun
Bearing her darkness as a gift of surrender
Transmuting burning light into a subtle crown
Light that casts a shadow but leaves no mark
fleeting and fragile, a sacred moment
skirting those who would try to capture it
We are forever coming together
And we are forever falling apart
You and I, Us and Them, We and Oneness
Change the only constant
Relying only on the unreliable
Nothing is certain
Only that this moment with its exquisite pain and explosive radiance
Is all there is
The universe expands,
And the halo between us dims
In the end, we find the beginning
In the parts, we find the whole
There is nothing left in my hands
Nothing, yet everything