What can it mean
to love the life
that is my own?

It is to love
the longings,
the loss,
the fears,
that always find their way aboard.

Or maybe the call is simply to turn
my gaze towards
the laughter,
the taste of coffee in morning light,
the smell of braided sweetgrass,
the touch of a hand finding another again,
the shadow of bird wings soaring above.

What can it mean
to love the life
that is my own?

If love comes only from the light,
then why whenever I’m asked to share my story
do I talk of my struggle to be born,
gasping for air?
Why do I remember in my body the child that felt darkness?
Why still hold the secrets of my family?

What use do I have for the moment I was asked by Ms. Tucker in second grade
to spelled the word
“Of”,
And I whispered to the class…
”Fo”?

What does love and life
have to do with divorce and death?
What story is being told through my daughters’ burns?
Where do the heaps of disappointment fit in the equation of love?

What can it mean,
to love the life
that is our own?

All we have are our pieces of
delights and despair,
all gathered into One
asking to be
tenderly carried forward.