Jack & Jill

We were climbing to the well again,
and when you faltered, so did I.
Our buckets will remain as empty
as the shoes of the deceased.

Birth and death are both
experienced alone.
We were alone in each other’s arms, skin to skin,
alone inside each other,
as our blue jeans wrangled on the floor.

Though we hurled ourselves from coast to coast,
landing in the other’s room,
and we hurled our different meanings too,
like atom bombs colliding with a fart,
we were alone at the beginning and we will be at the end.

I thought that I might be enough to fill you up,
but I had to climb inside you all the way.
I found myself in the pit of your womb,
cramped and suffocating, but safe, moist, known.

While I in the darkness nursed on your innards,
you in the light went climbing to the well,
thirsty for it, empty still.
The king and queen looked on.
You pulled another joker from the deck,
another hand.

One finger.
Two fingers.
Three fingers.
Four.
No matter how many,
it always takes more.

How many fingers to plug the the hole in the dam,
to keep that nothingness inside from rushing out?

When it broke,
I came too,
a messy rebirth, onto the floor,
with the rumpled clothes,
and hair bands,
and stray coins,
and receipts,
and belts,
and plastic bags,
and socks,
and flakes of oatmeal,
the dust.

Like flood debris, the miscellaneous trappings of this life.
Like a garden,
the fish, the flowers, the deaths and debuts, the blessing of rain, or the curse.

Life is the scraps, the scraps of itself.
It is the empty shoes left in the closet,
the rings, the watches, the tears withheld.

Life is the blessing or curse of rain and nothing else.

Where were the warnings?
When will we be not alone?

The skies open and answer our questions
with nothing more or less
than the familiar, raging, purple hurricane of life and death.
We are always alone, never alone, at the beginning and the end.
And we die a thousand times in one life.
And we live a thousand lives, though we die but once.
And we scramble up the hill and falter –
thousands and thousands of times.

The storm never ceases.
The floods don’t recede.
We are always caught in that downpour.

Yet we climb up the hill, and scramble and break,
bemoaning our empty buckets,
crying for water in the rain.