Give and Take

Memory mixed with hope.

Five years ago this December
a man with inappropriately placed
cameras in his classroom
delicately told me in a Christmas card
I focus too heavily on the future
and I should hold tightly my youth.

 

Another man a year prior
advised me not to listen to voices
laced with foreign pressure and judgments.
So I look and I look and I look back

 

and I don't listen anymore

 

because one man fell crooked
from his pious pedestal
and the other crawled down in hurt
as though the world took too much from him
and regardless of his purpose in life
he would no longer give
what he could offer
for fear it would be stolen
unappreciated.

 

And now at the precipice
I may still look foward too often,
anticipating with words like 'forever'
and I might at times listen
to offensive and abbrasive tongues.

 

But standing here in your arms,
our breath colliding so gently,

 

what have I to fear

 

because I live only in this moment
and listen to no unwanted voices.
I will take everything you offer
and I will give until
eternity ends.