Eclipse

In the arctic blast of winter,
grief and dark despair
cloaked me like a shroud
and yet I was never warmed
by the heavy mantle
unwillingly shouldered.

My world had gone gray

cloudy, dark, bleak and ice cuttingly cold
stark, frightening and so very strange
a boulder landed in my chest,
eclipsing my heart with its weight.

Physical pain would have been a relief.

Wishing someone would crush my jaw beneath her fist
so I could crack and bleed and my outsides could match
my insides.

My eyes hollow, weary and still

the horizon, her face, seeking a different
answer.

Crawling toward reason,

my knees bruised and bleeding,
my hands cut from the rocks in the road
my hair hanging lank and long across my
red rimmed eyes.

The darkest hour is before dawn

and in that eclipse of all I held dear,
my world was inky black.

With no backbone or sense of self to support me
I crumbled to the ground
and wanted to die.
Slipping away into nothing for the relief of it
Escape from the weight on my chest and pain too severe
to allow me to draw breathe

Plodding toward a destination unknown,

Finding no pleasure in the journey
and no vision of the destination.
My children holding the only faith I had
in the palms of their tiny and small hands.

Life happening all around me but

none within me.
Dead but not dead enough
Each breath requiring all the will I had .

Seeking sunshine in the stark ice of winter

Constant cold under layers of cover

The darkest hour is before dawn.

I howl at the eclipsed moon

my pain and rage
festering up and out of my mouth
spilling down my breasts
foaming, boiling, scalding hot
the length of my body and self.

“I will not be taken down!”
and the moon cracks open,
a single moonbeam
filtering gentle light on the
seed lain in the ruins of me.

My tears afford water enough to
sprout the tender grain.
Gently unfolding bit by delicate bit.

Springing forth from the desolation

in the darkest hour before dawn
stretching skyward toward the heavens
is the part of me that would not die.

The part of me who believes in

the healing power of a full moon,
the metamorphosis of life,
the tonic of laughter.

The part of me who sought you

without realizing I still believed.

In that darkest hour before dawn,
In an act of miraculous faith,
I found myself open, wanting, waiting
for you.

And the floodgates opened once again

With nothing held back save the demons
of my past, I faced you fully,
smiling into your warm and laughing eyes,
the color of richest chocolate.
I inhaled you deeply into me,
breathing you in and mingling your life into mine.
 
The eclipse passed and the sun shone through
Brightly, burning away the torn remnants of my
shroud of grief.
Bathing me with warmth and light and you.
 
Smiling quietly, gently and knowingly – for this was always to be
The eclipse, the nuclear winter and now,
having eclipsed all other lovers
You.

~ Mk Michaels