Why We Should be Happy With Berry Jam on Table Edges

I see young people together, in love, in lust, lost, planning an event, a day, or a life, and I see impatience, I see the desire for appropriation. I see conclusions rather than drifting coffee aroma, I see hard closed city alleys rather than coastlines lazily disappearing into beautiful haze. I see uncomfortable hiatuses, wounded silences, I see complaints where there should be enquiries. I see good times as planned methods instead of uncapped madnesses.

My heart breaks to see ordinariness being discounted so deeply.

Nobody likes a small life, but nobody can ignite the heart without seeing light glisten in a raindrop. And why is it so difficult to let life unfold in its uncomplicated munificence instead of trying to continually force its hand? There’s only so much that the heart or a life can manufacture, as the machinery will be wrenched and what will come out will maim.

Let each other be free, I say, let the other fail. In the frailty will lie the kernel of the strength of what both of you will mean to each other. Beyond pretense, beyond the need for proof, beyond the desire to make a point.

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Why We Should be Happy With Berry Jam on Table Edges

So much love going waste,

all ready to bind and enhance, but

dissipating into uncomfortable silences,

unfolding in wounded stretches,

wrenched into two slabs of body,

cleaved now for similar destinies.

Do they even know, it’s fortuitous to find ties

which smell of home and dandelions,

of berry jam left sticky on table edges

and a child’s delighted yelp outside.

But to be young is never to know slow,

to merge midnights and dawns,

to see breath as expendable,

to run and see love as scenery passing by.

Maybe someday they will be less footloose

and find curiosity in what they get used to,

to find what’s old is worth worship,

to know the look back as she leaves,

and his goofy lopsided smile as signs

that we cannot leave everything behind -

and it’s better to jog and then simmer down

as our breath catches up with the still air

and we know finally that the hard sun

will always find its way into lives, but

the shade of an apple tree is also a destination

however gnarled the branches might seem.

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