Not You

[carose59]

Not You

                              Reject: verb

                              To refuse to have
                                        to take
                                        to recognize.

                              To discard as useless
                                          or unsatisfactory.

                              To throw out.

The union starts in failure.

The body, so warm and safe,
the blood familiar
the heartbeat: the rhythm of the universe
until the universe ends.

In tragedy, trauma, sudden collision with the conclusion of everything--

or slow shut-down
a summer day whose lights fade and dim, gradually going out.

It doesn't matter.
The end is the same:
The End.


Silence
 as
the blood chills.


The body--
no longer a who, but an it
--is dismantled--
turned into a puzzle,
jig-sawed into pieces;
a Scrabble game,
the letters mixed and rearranged:
its message rewritten like a ransom note
all context destroyed.


There is no one home
and the house has been sold, brick by brick,
and carried away.


The world is ice:
foreign
incomprehensible
the message is: alonealonealone

screams of silence
antiseptic, untainted, uncontaminated by love

purity reigns in the arctic stillness:

we must touch nothing of the world
must let nothing touch us, love us

until

until

Until a new rhythm invades us
as we invade it
swimming in a river that
flows through us,

we are conjoined,
more intimate than intimate

blood that is not our blood
heat that is not our heat
life that is not our life
just for an instant!

loves us
(just for an instant . . . ).

The new words make an unfamiliar language we struggle to learn
and so we whisper in a cadence not our own
speak shout sing
one with the new rhythm until


no

No

NO

here, giving all, giving everything--
changing language,
pulse,
discarding True North for parts unknown,
leaving sure, solid rock for a maybe-chance--
forsaking identity,

    betraying,
abandoning everything we have ever been, known, loved!

forswearing new allegiance unto eternity!--

still, no,
still, we are not wanted.

That moment of love was mistaken identity. 

One heart is not another.
One  life is not another.

Some souls would rather die             than embrace a transplant.