Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. - Matthew 1:22-23 KJV
Before this,
cold was something I understood
the way you understand a season;
by name,
by rule,
by watching it happen elsewhere.
It wasn’t personal.
Now it is.
It gets through cloth
without asking.
There’s no talking it out of staying.
Cold doesn’t argue.
The air turns out
to be sharper than it looks.
It finds places
I hadn’t known to keep.
Hunger was like that once,
just a word I used
to keep creatures moving
toward one another.
I never meant it
to speak back.
Now it does.
Not loudly.
Just enough
to be impossible to ignore.
Need doesn’t wait
for understanding.
It arrives complete.
I am being held.
The hands aren’t settled yet.
They shake,
the way hands do
when they know they matter.
I let them.
Their warmth comes mixed
with worry.
You feel the worry first.
The animals notice.
They always do.
They’ve stopped moving.
Not afraid -
just aware.
They know breath.
They know when warmth
might not last.
The ox lowers its head.
The donkey stays put.
That’s all.
I try to breathe
and don’t quite manage it.
My body doesn’t answer
the way I expect.
Speech has narrowed
to a sound -
air leaving
because it must.
The animals don’t mind.
They’ve heard this before.
They know what it means
when something can’t explain itself.
Nothing happens quickly.
This is what I didn’t know:
that depending
means waiting,
and waiting
means staying with discomfort.
That being loved,
when you can’t return the favor,
is harder than giving.
I never had weight before.
Nothing pressed back.
Now straw keeps track of me.
Now breath fogs the dark.
Now someone leans closer
because I’m warm,
and warmth doesn’t always keep.
Sleep can take me now.
Pain is possible.
The world can fail me.
The animals stay anyway.
They share what heat they have.
They don’t ask questions.
I’ve come into
the smallness I once allowed.
I’m not hiding.
I’m smaller.
And this -
this being here,
this learning how much a body needs -
is where the work starts.
GBS jr
2022
0 Comments