2. Portraits of truth🌻

And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

2 Corinthians 12:9

31/07/17

I’ve never been familiar with inadequacy in relationships, but I have never known a kindness like this. I am not sure that I deserve a kindness like this. His room smells of it too. And of detergent and mint and honey, and he smells of cocoa butter. The palms of his hands are soft from its use and they always feel sure, but also careful on my full cheeks. Of late, it’s begun to feel a lot like love inside my ribcage. I’m not sure he knows that my love looks like frayed tropics and harsh suns, where I can smile the smile that knows no strangers because they are bone of my bone.  I pray he learns of this kind of love.

Last week he took me to a spot that reminds him most of home where the backdrop is black and green and yellow and lover’s rock and reggae and it feels like my love can be itself here. It feels like we may have been sourced from the same values, only that we have endured a separate refinement. I think he wants to share part of himself with me, I didn’t ask. Instead I wondered in silence how far he would let me see into his heritage and I wondered if, to him, family was only as far as blood and the possibility of limit saddened me.

I think to ask him of us. As in, what us can there be when there is no longer a here. I do not ask. This irrational fear I have of honest people, myself included, has shaped this passiveness that I am finding difficult to rid myself of. I fear honesty to be a loneliness I will not be able to return from but those aren’t really the same things, one is a cruelty.  But in fear I have bent my spine backwards to dodge truth and avoid its short-lived sting so many times that it’s become easier to look to the past and regret than to look forward at the possibility of regret; as in us is possibly a state of matter that can only exist in a context of collegiate vacuums, I prefer to be here without knowing.

I offered him a Bible so that the way he speaks of God remained uncorrupted by my self-righteousness. I invested in one for myself too. I sense that he has been sent to pique at my faith and force a relearning of the God in me.

Then I bought some purple tulips from the local market to offer him. I feel shame that they are not standing sturdy but I hope that my vulnerability will stand firm for him to see. He brushes his lips against mine and smiles then asks me why. I want to tell him it’s because it feels more intimate than the nights I spent in his arms and that I want our affection, like the flowers, to be beautiful and raw and natural. I don’t tell him, because part of me refuses to liken this love to cut flowers whose growth have been interrupted so instead I shrug and kiss him again, then acknowledge the bitter smell of regret wafting through me.

 Somewhere along the way I think I refused to learn of accessibility. I remain detached and light though that ends up being a heavier burden. I do not want to settle for regret anymore. So, I allow God. I let God, and I experience a new peacefulness, reminiscent of a homecoming where fragrant petals are all that protect me, I am raw here and still smiling the smile of kinship and adorned by the comfort of scripture and healing.

I am not sure how many times I’ve sat on his lap and contemplated easing into truth after chocking back words I could not carry anymore. I run my thumb along his bearded jaw and make to open my mouth and communicate what I am sure he must have read in my eyes and he suddenly starts feeling too real to match fairy tale endings. But I know to my depths that I do not want the us we have come to build to be interrupted by a here beyond or control. And then I wonder how truth can be both painful to hold and to offer. And then I think of the possibility of limitlessness and the smell of mint and honey and cocoa butter, and the want to imprint my fragrance on this possibility is too overwhelming not tell him of my kind of love. So I allow God, and ease myself, hesitantly and yet determined, into truth.🌻