before the moon

I hear you knocking at my door. You've been hanging around, intruding on my hopes and dreams since I first left my mother. I've named you several times.

You came in like a whisper through a cracked window once and I punished you with all the will I had and drove you outside to wait.

I don't even know you and yet what you ask from me is nothing short of everything.

It's my body you want. I know. I'll have to make you from scratch out of my own blood and bone. I will have to let you stretch me and weight me for months until the agonizing day when you are finally ready to tear my flesh open so you can breathe your own air. But it won't end there.

It only begins then. Even as I am healing from the scars you will have left, you'll want me to feed you and bathe you and sacrifice sleep and showers and nights out. You'll make me helpless in my service to you.

For years you will be my burden, my responsibility. Yes! I said BURDEN! I can say it now because you are only a shadow on the lawn and have not yet made me an eggshell walker.

For it's not only my body will you need, but my mind as well.

I'll have to cultivate your experiences, weeding out the harmful in favor of the good, the healthy, the valuable.

And I am supposed to know the difference.

This leaves no room for myself. No space for freedom or spontaneity. You would belong to me only for duty, but I would belong to you for everything.

Don't mistake the locked door and my head shaking "No" for lack of desire. Oh, little stranger, my cells ache for you! When I allow myself to imagine you for very long, I nearly melt into surrender. It is a terrible thing life does in longing for itself. But, I can only suppress longing because I regard us too much. I know how love overtakes and I sense it would drown me for you. And I am not yet willing to receive that death. Heaven may wait on the other side, but I am not convinced. Keep waiting little stranger, time may set us both free.