Sunflowers

They say that when two souls
Who’ve always known each other
Meet for the first time
Everything stops
Even time itself

The depth of connection
Too strong for Life 
To keep on, keeping on 

The Poets have tried and 
Almost always failed
To describe this Love
For it really can only be felt

Something like the sky 
Returning to itself
Or the sun seeing its own shine
Or the heart feeling its own beat
Or the wind feeling its own breath

Something like seeds from the same tree
Traversing oceans over millennia 
Only to wash up next to one another
On the very same shore

Something like the youngest, most tender
Part of us being held in a way
It was never, yet always meant to, be held

Something about suffering 
And rugged self-reliance
Meeting its final resting place
So a softer way can be born

And the rightness permeates 
Every cell of your being 
And the love floods 
The totality of your heart

Until at some point
The pain comes knocking at your door
The ache of never having had this before
Of never being loved in this way
The settling for less
The mucky familiarity of harm
The fear of loss and losing yourself
The “what if this cannot last?”

And for awhile it seems 
You must drift apart
In order to return to this 
Thing that You Always Deserved

Oh the familiarity of Aloneness
Has an irresistible pull
As souls calibrate to 
The tender yet terrifying
Place of Real Love

They say that 
We’re drawn to those 
Who bring alive 
The parts in ourselves
That were never allowed 
To be born

Sun to seeds that have always 
Laid dormant beneath
Layers of pain and generational harm
When those shoots see
Their first light 
It can feel too blinding
The dark quietness of being 
Unseen pulls us back down, down, down

But when I sit on the balcony
In the soft light of dawn
The sky speaks to me

She reminds me how 
The first balm on a wound stings 
Oh it stings So Much 
That you curse the balm
And wish you’d never found it

She reminds me 
How much healing can hurt

They say that when two souls
Meet for the first time
The sky explodes
And tries to push you apart

But if you can close your eyes and remember
How the world stands still when you hold each other
How the shoots eventually grow into sunflowers, 
Facing, tall and proud, the light that they 
Were never allowed 

And despite war, and suffering,
And the inevitability of pain
You have each other

But most of all
In this tender, loving place
You finally have yourself 
Whole, fully loved and always always free.