The Trade

Loss is a trafficker of hope
Hawking the familiar as a cloak that warms
It whispers that it’s always warmer here
And though it clothed us first,
We look down to find our arms wrapped tight

Loss dissembles in the night
Posing as one’s only friend
It trains us to believe that letting go
That thrusting down the cloak
Would leave us forlorn

We believe, then, that all we have
Is memory
That angelic ghost
That serpentine thread of thought
That we refuse to exorcise
That slithers through our mind and circles back again
And we believe, then,
That the unwrapping of arms would leave us cold

Truth promises that we will stand cold
For a time, but not forever
For when we cast out the demon
When we crush the serpent’s head
When we drop that garment of despair
We feel the breeze again
And we break out of a well-worn pit
To walk, then run
Leaving behind the pile of pain
And embracing true warmth

It is then that we stand taller
No longer stooped,
Looking low,
But ahead to something more
For now we can see pain for what it is
And step into the straight path
The beginning of our present,
With a future in sight, unclear as it may be


We blink and look back for just a moment
Pensive
For what we see is not a cloak at all
But a cocoon that we’ve shed
We don a newness that could never have come
Without the loss
But in it we could not stay,
Though loss would love the company,
For there’s so much more now that we can give
To a world still wrapped tight in its own loss
Waiting for a voice to say that freedom is worth the risk
Of being cold for but a moment