The pattern

Is what else Leonardo was doing on that day,
when he wasn't working on the Mona Lisa.

No one remembers now,
"What a day that was, when old Leonardo was
washing his sandals!"

We remember the days when they risked their safety for beauty,
When they risked their hearts for no guarantee of love.

For all the time I spend trying to dodge hurt
the story of my life won't be the days I avoided complication
won't be the tales I already knew the endings to

but instead

the times I stormed the barricades, unarmed
the times I let go of the railing and fell
the times I held my wounded heart in my hands and told it:

Our story is not going to be
about the one that got away.

Sometimes the hurt feels like too high a price for what I found.
But through that hurt is depth
And beyond it are joy, tears, laughter, and a new kind of trust
not based on the impossibility of failure
but instead on the movement through failure
where the restraints have been broken
and the persistence, the bond becomes a choice--
a willing, living, caring, believing phoenix of a choice
as alive and unprotected and risky as our lives really are

instead of

the pattern.

Labels: Poems