Resiliency

I'm weary of resiliency.
I want the kind of heart that breaks
The way a wafer cracks in two --
Along a fault.  Mine merely aches

And bends, as does an autumn twig,
Which, drenched by April rain and tossed
For dead, cannot be snapped in two,
Made deathless by the green it's lost.

Each cruelty I withstand prepares
Me merely for the next one dealt,
Its shadow lengthening along my chest
To maim not cleave the world I felt.

Yes, time, the balm of suffering,
Does quite the opposite for me,
The grave, I fear, will only serve
To deepen my resiliency.

                     -- Allison Burnett

Garden Gate

The April moon had fled it seemed:
No stars,
No shadows -- everything as black
As bedroom walls that shock an infant back
To earth when he has tumbled from a dream.
Blind hands outstretched, I found the latch,
The path,
The weeping tree, your childhood swing,
Then did as I’d been told:  I settled in,
(The only sound the ticking of my watch)
Imagining your mother’s face.
Aghast,
Struck dumb in widening disbelief,
That you, her only child, conceived in grief,
Who every evening led the family grace,
Were gone.  I pictured her and smiled,
But knew
The fairy tale was yours, not mine -- 
The consummation of a heart confined,
The triumph of a long-embittered child
Who fell in love one snowy spring, 
And seized
By passion’s uninvited claim,
Escaped the tower, her daily round of shame,
And made of destiny a wondrous thing.
It seemed impossible that such
A tale
Could actually take place today,
Or ever had, considering the way
Most lovers ravage everything they touch.
And yet it could.  I tossed the swing
And laughed,
Imagined where we’d stow your clothes,
Then felt and snapped for you a tiny rose,
Half-dead – the next of many offerings.

Today, how curious it seems,
That I,
Not once in all those draining hours,
Surrounded by a host of dying flowers,
Imagining the life that we would lead,
Foresaw the story’s final shame.
So blind.
Eleven passed, then five, then nine.
The sun’s mute discovery was mine.
I turned and left, but not the way I came.

--Allison Burnett