You have to allow yourself to take joy. Otherwise, you are no good to anyone. Ruth Stone

That I should feel like this, just this, hurts.

That I should feel alone, utterly alone, when I know that I am not, hurts.

That I should desire words spoken outloud and not restrained; that I should desire an opening and closing, a space to be...

It has always been a desire for a space to be. And nothing less. Always more.

I think that I must come to understand myself, soon--that in the evenings of walking here to there and back, to leave again, to walk there again, and back again, I should become full of myself and solid.

But it is only that I grow more hollow, more unbalanced within myself.

What is it, do you think, that I seek?

Is it a Helen Burns, that leaves first, all the same, for in the leaving, I feel her love stronger than when she cradled me in the night?

Or is it a Heathcliff that is not only who I love but is a part of me, always, hauntingly and painfully--so much so that their weight makes my weight light and heavy and just barely enough?

Or is it neither? And I want only to rest, to fall away, to become finally hollow enough, for won't I, then, cave-in like a sinkhole pocking a rocky Kentucky field?

A sinkhole filled without my wanting with the likes of rusted out buckets, doorless refridgerators, tires, trash.

I want, only, to be allowed to be weak and vulnerable and small, like a child, and to cry into the arms of unconditional love.

But brave enough to believe that it is real, despite what the voices in my head keep saying.

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