I Held Love In My Hands

I held love in my hands.
I heard its heart beating,
Felt its patient, warm breath upon my skin,
And clasped its hand in mine,

     just firmly enough, just softly enough.

My heart danced a new rhythm,
My palms glistened with joy,
A void in my chest—
Its existence prior unknown to me—

     disintegrated, exalted.

Then love looked me in the eye and said,
I have walked with you since the long days
Grew ever shorter and the green gave way
To a kaleidoscope of reds and browns,

     but i can walk with you no more.

Truth poured out through its eyes
As it took leave of me,
Whispering to me gently in my ear,
Please know I will always be there,

     and it was  gone.

it is 2:11 am and the air is cold.

the world celebrates;

a new year has arrived.

the others clearly hear it marching in

with trumpeters and fanfare,

lumbering at them like

Joe DiMaggio or Neil Armstrong,

ticker tape parade style.

to me, it is the nose on my face.

has it changed since yesterday? surely.

i am at a loss to tell you how,

but change is inescapable,

so i trust it is true.

i suppose i simply
can't see the parade from where i sit.

it was ok, maybe even a little cool,

to turn 10 and have a 2-digit age,

but how-does-it-feel-to-be-10??

always struck me as odd,

even that day, as

it didn't feel much different than

9 years and 364 days, really,

so i never knew what to say.

now i know what to say,

so i repeatedly tell people that

every day of my life is a New Year.

they sip and dance and hug and kiss

and i am left to wonder how they celebrate

the other 364 New Years Days of their lives

every calendar,

but of course they don't celebrate at all

except for one sad and awkward day,

yet I, somehow, am the strange one.

Happy New Year

happy new year,
they say to me.
but today feels just
like yesterday did—
another now
for me to embrace—
and again i fail
to understand the rules.

happy new year, i reply,
feeling guilty and diseased
because i know my lie
hangs in the air
like an acrid smoke
and stings their faces
like a slap.

i love you, i add,
which is true
because i do,
and because loving people
even when i can't understand them
has always been easy.

happy new year and
i love you, i pronounce,
happy to have sown the seeds
of a glorious truth in the
fertile ground of my lie.

thank yous echo back to me
and happy new years spill my way,
and my i love yous lay in shards,
broken, on the ground,
obstacles to navigate,
awkward and dangerous,
like me.