The Great Divide

What would happen?
Would there be fireworks?
Would there be pain?
Angels and music? Or darkness?

What would happen
if we closed the divide
between our souls
and touched the tenderest places,

gave ourselves to each other
in an orgy of trust,
crossing the great divide
in an act of mad faith?

About this poem

People talk to me. I never share their stories, but as I listen, I see patterns in life, in relationships. And one of those patterns is the fear of intimacy, which so often overcomes a yearning for intimacy that is almost, but not quite as great. Something holds us back.

Something? What would happen, if that something were to disappear? I wonder. You have no idea how often I wonder. And is it madness to trust? Or madness not to? I don’t have the answers. Only the questions.

The picture was taken earlier this week, at my parent’s house in Richmond, Virginia.

Tom