Das kindliche Lieben / Childlike Love: A Poem

Your face had been a constant distortion of the truth.

Within you. You sold out. The idea of you, the conformity.

You wanted us to pay for your choices.

How you agreed to lose yourself and reclaim yourself

On the surface when everything seemed too late already.

You denied life and I could see it on your face,

I understood the moments when you were

The happiest you could be and they disappeared,

Had always been short-lived. You tried to climb

Out of your premature tomb, but the collective

Narcosis threw you back where it thought you belonged.

You never felt that you belonged.

Not to us. Not to me. Not here, not there.

You were always running away, escaping,

Moments, everything, but you’d never move.

You’d accomplish your battles in your head.

Your body would never move. And I looked at you.

Am I the same? Dreaming of action whilst staying still?

You woke up, the heartbeat enraged, was it too late?

Always lashing out, bashing the whole world.

There had been a time when I accepted the

Love you threw into the garbage and I picked it up.

You thought I didn’t need it. I thought I did.

I didn’t know how sick it truly was.

I thought it landed in the dumpster for no good reason.

I used my compassion in the wrong place.

I followed blindly instead of being aware of

My own circumstances.

No glasses could have been pink enough.

I didn’t know that you threw away

My love, that to you, it only helped

For a fleeting instant, that you didn’t

Know how to respond to it, how to

Give it back even stronger,

How to make it resonate, use it for good.

Hold me, speak to me, it landed in a

Minefield, buried, exploded, somewhere,

Where yours came from, a lost cause,

Rat-infested, undigested, abused, I lost

It all, myself included, gave myself,

Wholeheartedly to you and you wouldn’t

Pick yourself back up.

Maybe I tried to impress you.

Maybe I had lost from that point onward.

Maybe I failed in your eyes.

What does it matter?

I would give you all my life’s resources

And you let me give them all,

You begged me, pulled me, down, with you,

Needing more of that bottomless love

That a child gives, and I bled and emptied myself

And nothing seemed to grow from it,

I thought I had been sick too, my efforts

And love, worthless, my love couldn’t heal,

What then? I felt too insignificant, looking

At whoever’s disengaged footsteps.

Swallowing my light, father,

Swallowing my light, but guess what,

I learned on my own how to

Rescue love from the gutter

And nurture it back to health and sanity.