Warped

Elizabeth Helmich
Aug 24, 2017 · 2 min read
Woven fabric — photo, courtesy of Pixabay

The places we don’t travel.
I wonder about yours…
Do they look like mine?

I hope they don’t. I hope that yours
never threaten to push you off the shuttle—
to remove you entirely.

To carry away all but a faint echo
of those four syllables comprising your name
that fell from lips who forgot to care
for you in the midst of clouded soul debris.

This is my greatest nightmare.
That there will be no more cascades,
no more waterfalls to chase.

It never really mattered if we made it…
The thrill was in the hunt for the unknown,
for the swim in frigid water, sensations
in hidden depths of the dive,
never really knowing if we’d come up —
and not needing to.

Precious air is always borrowed,
and I know now the peace in the silence of wonder.

I need to show how you matter. To me, to the world.
To those faces you never met because you were too {*}.
I will tell them of you.

I will strap your tales to my back, until they become
woven over me as fibers of my being,
longed for all these years, waiting to be unwound.

I will keep your book on my shelf,
prominently standing guard over roving thoughts
I have no container for,
where I see the title every night
before my mind gives up.

Being as such, I will carry your name with me,
carve each symbol along my spine,
hold the weight of you
as gold beneath my tongue.

I will take it to every lost corner,
uncovering it in each dangerous place
people don’t walk alone, to remind them
of their own face.

I promise to bring it there, where you wanted,
also to where you didn’t want,
but loose ends pulled you.

Each thread placed in the weft
needs to be accounted for,
and I will uncross what must be done.

I will speak it freely,
rolling you in whispers along the river,
watching, as your fabric expands the length
of me, forever.

)

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