The (Yielding)

Your arms are (parentheses) around my words,
cradling the weight of expectation,
holding the nearness of desire,
the moment before the beginning.

I found myself lost—
lost in The Yielding,
in the soft, undulating meringue
of valleys and peaks.

The blue distance hurtles toward me,
down tracks I cannot escape
vibrating beneath an inevitability.
My lips graze her softness.

Her arms were parentheses,
((wrapped, entangled, root to tip))—
she sleeps, she creeps, she leaps ahead,
and I am left buried, bloodied,
disintegrated to dust.

Illicit thoughts,
(Emerged)
Whispered words,
(Tempered)
Deafening screams,
(Fractured)

They say Da Vinci painted horizons blue
to reach into the distance,
to long for what lies beyond,
to long for you.

The other day, perched in our kitchen,
you asked me:
“Have you ever been happy?”

I retorted:
“Don’t you mean—
have we?”

What a question to ask,
to unravel.
Have we ever been happy?

Is happiness a static moment,
a memory we fail to grasp?
Is it the measure of contentment,
or merely the reflection of what came before?

When asked. How
do I reply?
Should I trick myself into yes?
Should I chase it into existence?
Or is it better to live in discontent—
to stretch, to reach,
to remain uncomfortable?

Is happiness the yielding,
or the harvest?
Do we measure joy in the weight of abundance,
or in the ache of pursuit?

Yield has two disparate meanings:

To yield—
to pause, to take stock,
to hold back.

To yield—
to receive,
a payload, a bounty,
to consume.

Squalor, to be squalored. Whole.
Squander, to be squandered. Whole.
Swallow, to be swallowed. Whole.

To exist in the stretch,
to yield in the far-fetch,
in the reach of the unknown,
in (the parentheses of) your arms—
to linger forever
in the longing.

To live in the here,
the now,
the always before,
the forever after.