[2nd draft]

The sun stampedes its rays through your window blinds.
It is daylight.

You sink further into the mattress, surrounding yourself
in the thick cover that lingers an evergreen scent in your nostrils.
This is one of those mornings.

One of those mornings after;
one of those mornings after you battled
another thunderstorm that nearly split your chest open.
You pray for just a few more seconds of rest, of suspension.
Because you know your heart will break.
Again, it will break.

But you asked for this.

During one of those other mornings,
when the world was so clear, a landscape of very vibrant colors
that zoomed into the very center of your solar plexus, when the rays bled into your skin and
you could taste the shift of autumn in your lungs.

It was one of these mornings, dewy and fresh and sharply clear
that you asked for your heart to become strong.
So very strong.
Stretched.

You prayed for it, leaping a joyful shout,
you begged for an indestructible heart and you finally
understood what this meant.

Indestructible because of its softness, flexibility, tenderness,
its ability to shape and wrap around Anyone,
no matter how prickly, metallic, sharp, razored or rubiks-riddled
Anyone’s soul may be—you asked that your heart be Enough
to hold even the most porcupine and bloated or withered of things.

So here you are. Morning, again.
You knew it had to happen like this.
That your own prickles, bricks, withered dry walls
had to come tumbling crumbling devastatingly down
like a rubble, a mess, a war reconstruction zone;
you can’t find your eyes underneath the gray swollen shadows,
your nose is too flattened and red, your lips have swollen like a hornet sting;
your face is shifting itself again, constructing the lines, logic, and curves of
smile… feel…wake…

You open your eyes.
The day comes smashing into you, too fast too fast.
Shut them again, quickly. Just a few more minutes of suspension.
Of stillness,

even though every molecule in your body is vibrating now,
humming, electrified, irritated, urgent.

That’s it.
Urgency.

It’s the urgency of
Morning calling to you now,

Awake, O sleeper, and Arise from the dead

your Beloved whispers His Light into you,
tender words like sharp arrows that pierce
joint marrow the seam between soul and spirit
and you are Free again

so you foolishly rashly exultantly exclaim,
Yes, send me into the Darkest Night!
Stretch my heart that it may hold more of You!

Glorious folly creates a true lover,

You are this exquisite fool.