Evocation #26 Lovesong

The psalmist writes, 
‘Just as a deer thirsts for water, my heart longs for you’...

I seek your presence beside me
and locate the pillows another widower suggested might help.

I seek your voice
and find it on your voicemail’s no answer response.

I seek your face
captured and frozen into hundreds of disparate hard and soft images in albums.

I seek your mind
and read your book to discover hidden wisdom.

I seek your love
and find it reflected in the longing of my own heart.

I seek your response
and confront the emptiness of home turned house.

I understand this state of grief.
It is a new existence.
Some might call it liminality - or purgatory?
It is an in-between.
I am no longer alive,
yet I am not yet dead.

I am not numb,
for there are too many tears
to claim a lack of feeling.
I disdain the morbid,
yet talk about death
to confirm and confront its reality -
to deny it the possibility of tricking me
into denial.

I have no death-wish...
But I do so long for Heaven now,
For you, my love, will be the resurrection promise.
Never have I needed faith so much...
and every day I will need more
to persevere
until the longing is satisfied.


(C) A A Koh-Butler, 2020