Devotion

Is this longing or devotion? I’ve come to realize the distinction is absence. In absence devotion is reduced to longing.

I long for you in the most involuntary ways, outstretching hands in twilight hoping to catch your skin on my fingertips. The endless space always jars me awake. I am sleepless.

I fill the void in my bed with silly pillows each of a different fabric hoping one will feel like you, but they jar me awake too. I have too many pillows now. 

My barren walls scream of absence. So, I fill them with plants and knick-knacks but the clutter reminds me of you too.  

So, here I am in a house I’ve made to look like home.  In a home you feel a little less alone. I fear I’ve created a tomb. Clawing in a comatose at the sides of a coffin, I hope to locate life. There is only emptiness and pillows. 

I read when I can’t sleep. I’ve read all your favorites now. They’ve become lullabies.  My fingertips feel you in the pages and it tricks me into slumber.  I fall asleep amongst literary gods and pray for relief. 

Morning beams trace my skin and I relish the warmth. Suspended somewhere between sleep and consciousness the sun craddles my weepy body. I hope its dawn brings anew, but it always deliver a loop. I am spinning like a worn record off-kilt. With each pass the wound deepens and the literary lullaby fades. Soon, I know it will be a screech.  

I am screaming now in desperation, in devotion, in longing? My sound meets silence. Around I spin again. Soon, I’ll crack and silence will befall me too. I beckon the break. Bring my body to rest. 

What is the dream? To write something fine, that would better than I am, and that would justify my trials and indiscretions. To offer proof, through a scramble of words, that God exists. Why do I write? – Devotion, Patti Smith

I write to make sense of this insensible longing. I write out of pure compulsion; a fury of unbridled devotion. I am reduced to my fingertips; the ones that reach for you in the night and write you into life in morning. Sometimes, I pray just so they can rest. At my heart they meet their other half. Their ridges melt into each other and finally they are home; two halves together whole.

I pray.

Let this longing materialize to devotion. Let her come home too.