If You Build It

She doesn't have to be real
He doesn't have to be listening
It doesn't have to have Platonic form
If you call, speak, listen or scream
You can build your own God.

A neurological model
Formed of longing and optimism
Crafted by the prayers of the heartsick,
crying out to know that which cannot be greater
Form it in your mind
Focus on its love
Talk as if not alone
And there you will find your lost friend

***

He tells me these things in sound and print
Celebrating the return of his lost love
while I wait inside with the porch light on.
I've forgotten the voice I once knew so well.

It seems so easy
Allowing the mind to do what it does
Forming avatars of hope and surrender
Yet..I can't.

***

I saw my essence from above today
and grieve what I found
The whole being is on permanent defense
Losses of the past have formed speared walls of preservation
The body insisting, "you will not hurt him!"
while the mind wants to give up and accept companionship
Even if it isn't real.
It's not the fear that Love will show up
It's the fear that it won't

Losing my Jesus
that death by a thousand cuts -
this body won't let it happen again.
So while the mind longs to quit fighting,
to pray to whatever will absorb those prayers
and offer that sweet illusion of safety
The body is winning the fight.
God, whatever that might be
is losing to these walls of self-preservation.



inspired by Finding God in the Waves, by Mike McHargue