Showing Up

[It seems that showing up is overrated, at least right now.]

Update (the statement above was written as the beginning of this post months ago):

Showing Up
(first draft - May 21, 2017 - after 1:30 am)

I do not know how to not show up.
I do not know how to shut off my brain
long enough to sleep away the pain
I absorb and absorb, like a drug I need
and that is also killing me without a way
to transform the black into gold.
The night has become too long,
the day too scarce and unfamiliar.
The fog in my brain leaks through my eyes,
the mist heavy upon my eyelids.

No one seems to see what they speak.

I will not be reached, I beg to be reached.
I understand now what a beggar might
be feeling when I pretend that they have
lost feeling so I do not have to see.
I think I know now that they beg from that place
that does not know how to forget,
will not forget the need for a morsel --
of food, yes, the way the body does its job . . . 
but I speak of the morsel of love
that Carl Sandburg speaks in the poem
At a Window
that I am starting to understand.
I keep reading to soothe the ache of a loss
my parents will not reach.

This window that separates us
makes the hell unbearable.
I would rather have no window 
than this one that allows me to see
what you seem to hold back,
what I am not able to receive.

Unreachable me, please let me
reach you.

I am the only one who can,
as much as I have tried to find others
to fill the position,
to fill the empty
that is heavier than steel
around my heart.
I am the one who has listened,
who has sheltered,
carried these fragments
that no one else wanted,
like the girl we pity on the streets
selling useless wares to feed
her poor family.

I am the one who knows
this poor family inside,
somewhere below my doubt
and fear after fear after fear
that what seems too poor
to value is broken,
but not beyond repair.
They must not
be cast away as nothing,
but must take root --
in the desert for now if needs be --
and prepare for the end
of the famine, 
the beginning of dust
to mud to water
to wine to love
that was always there
waiting for me
to offer it to the 
starving plant.

I waited too long
to share the love
I thought I was keeping
only from one --
how many suffer 
when we think we hate
only ourselves?

I waited too long,
but there is nothing
left for me to do or try.
Even death will not
receive me.
Even the night that
I will not leave
to rest,
rejects me.

Drink, drink
you desert child.

The roots have not
forgotten you. 

They know how to hold
the water until you
are ready to drink
and live.