Your Face

Come.

Do not wash the grief from your hands
before you reach for me.

I am waiting for you in the unwashed place.

You have traveled so far with your candles and your practices,
the old thirst disguised as devotion.

But your body knows what the pilgrim has forgotten . . .
Spirit descends to be met.

_______________________________

The beloved beside you is not an obstacle.
They are the reflection of the one face
you don’t want to see.

Unaware, they carry the map to your undiscovered country . . .
The very wound you ask them never to touch.

The skin. The longing. The terrible meeting.
This is the opening.

_______________________________

Grief hums beneath the wanting.
Finally . . . it will not destroy you.

Stop asking for a container that does not wobble.
Tremble, drink, swallow, spill and spit . . .
The sanctuary you are seeking is not elsewhere.

Even God,
now,
is lonely for your actual face.