I Will Retreat

I will retreat. 

Not out of fear, but prudence.

It is instinctual, this retreat.

A snail’s sudden withdrawal as it brushes against alkaline edges, concentric rings, stillborn ripples of hate

spreading out to the horizon so that it feels the world is not a blue marble to behold, but a crystalline block to be licked, bitless mouth frothing, unfettered by restraint now that the barn stands

slanted  

and

empty

It’s necessary, this retreat.

As I awaken to the new reality that the dark disembodied spirits are just our own shadows and the light is behind us and not in us as we believed. 

So we stand

still

Bathed in your heat and rage and unabashed glee.

We want to turn back.  I want to turn back.

To remember the smoothness of the cave’s wall, the vagueness of our dark, delicate soft edges, waltzing now behind us and not this, the crystalline depths of your anger,

its

sharp                                                contours,

   its                                    endless                                                           chasms

of anger,

ridges

and textures

and fissures of

  malevolence

How can one unknow one’s aloneness?  How does one unfurl the now? How does one not bathe in the heat of your righteousness, soaking up this knowledge of

unwantedness?

Ahhh, to be warmed again by the press of bodies, to believe again that our dance is light and not the dissolution of a life once moving forward, slowly for sure, but inevitably, 

but now shrivels

and shakes

and writhes

in the whiteness of your hate.  

I will retreat

For I must to live.