To Be Whole

Am I a broken man?
To answer that
I would need to know
What it means
To be whole.

Reader
Oh, my beloved reader
After my own heart
You know me
So much better
Than anyone else
Than I know
Myself.

I ask of you this:
Does absence
Equate with emptiness?
Does my lack of you
Or your lack of me
Mean we are apart?

Do you not stare
Into spaces unoccupied
And see
What is both
There
And not
At the same time?

Surely you have sat
Or lain on barren floor
And wept
The same as me.

Do you not proceed
Towards goals yet unknown
Uncertain the destination
But assured the path?

We have often asked
Where the light hides
When the sun has fallen
Behind the distant skyline
But do we know likewise
Where the shadows choose to rest
When they are deemed obsolete
By golden beams
unobstructed?

We are the same
You and I.
But we are not identical.

We are the same in that
There are parts of ourselves
That someone
Somewhere
Told us
Weren’t worth keeping.
We are the same in that
We listened
We believed them
And we tried out best
-tried but did not truly succeed
To purge ourselves of these
Flaws
Errors
Cracks
In our defenses.
In this way
We are the same.
But, dear reader
We are also oh so different.

How I would love
To pick through the rubble
Of your past
To hold tightly every still-beating fragment of your heart
For I do not know
What the fools saw
Or were hoping to see;
I see you only as you are now
A beacon of light
Fractured and incomplete
Yet oh so beautiful in your imperfection.

So, maybe I am a broken man.
I accept this
Knowing
That nothing is ever destroyed
Or created
In this world.
I am still complete
Just not in this moment
I am larger than this moment
I am a timeline
Peppered with the pieces
That make up the whole.
Only those who are truly ready
With understanding and love
Will ever find those pieces
Will ever know me
And in doing so
Allow me to know them.