Human

by Kathleen Reeves

It was something other than fear of death
or love of the world, my friends, our plans—
having waited so long to enter it
I wanted to keep my body.
Even when so many wore it down
and even when it tormented me
during my long death, I thought of it
as a gift because I had come
to love it unconditionally.
Love: the word isn’t right.
Words fail me, they all fail me,
I’m disappointed in them now.
I was all words in the beginning
but my heart broke when I came into skin.
This is how it happened:
I had a heart, it broke
in the moment of having it,
I lived out life that way, heartbroken,
on earth, human.

–Read at St. Lydia’s on May 20, 2012