Love and regrets

I've been listening to this song alot recently,

Admiral Fell Promises - by Sun Kil Moon

Come out from the burning fire butterfly
Let me lock you in my room and keep you
For a while
Could you be the answer to my every prayer?
Could you be the one for who I care?

Come into my arms and let your worries die
Come out from the web of all your tangled lies
But be true to me and I’ll be true to you
Judge me not for what I’ve done but what I’ll do

A million nights have led
To this one that we are spending
And I know it’s better here
Than anywhere I’ve been going
With every morning grew
A void more wide and endless

Come out from the burning fire butterfly
Let me lock you in my room and keep you
For a while
You watch over me and I’ll watch over you
And if you go tomorrow choke me ‘till I’m blue

A thousand days have passed
In this house she and I were sharing
And I hate myself for it
But I have stopped caring
The Marilyn sky tonight
Is so black and blue and beautiful

I first heard it when I was in a different relationship last year. It was the type of relationship where we soon found that neither of us could really reach each other and so many words ended up lost in translation.

Yet, we both longed for something deeper, stronger and more real than what we could offer each other.

It was on one of these days particularly when I was filled with a yearning to be better for us, for the relationship, that I discovered this song on NPR. It's beauty and it's hope to reach the other person struck me and I shared it with him. But I feel that it was lost on him.

Now in my present relationship, I've suddenly come back to this song. Nothing in life is certain, there are no guarantees. Life is imperfect. And I've come back to this song because life moves in circles, but this time, the song isn't lost on the one I long to share it with.

Back in the day when I was younger and urgent to share my faith in Christ, I spoke to a friend of mine in class about Him. We were on the phone when I told her about my faith in Christ and how much he loved her, she then told me about her boyfriend and how she felt that she didn't need God. I told her about how a person's love can never be perfect, but God loves us perfectly. This one thing she then said to me has stayed with me ever since, "maybe I love him precisely because he's not perfect."

Today, I discovered something else, growing up, I had always felt that there was something I could have done to keep my parents marriage from falling apart. I could have been better, tried harder, I could have prayed harder, I could have been a kinder, more loving, more supportive daughter to my parents.

Today, I discovered, there was nothing I could have done to stop their marriage from falling apart. There was nothing I could have done to deflect the hurt of a scarred marriage.

Somehow the realization is stunning. I'm humbled to realize it. I could not have willed their marriage to work out. It was beyond my control. I can only learn to make peace with it and try to live my life in the best way I know how.

As I am sure my parents have done.

Shapes

Time and time and time
again,
the colors build
the shapes grow old

Tattered and worn,
tossed and scattered
The edges, worn down
have lost their
jauntiness

I look at you,
you look at me...

I see a faint outline

Who are you and
What are you defined by?

A keen sense for
verbal calisthenics and
quaint accents?

A sloping back
and a slack jaw
in the midst of
sonorous slumber?

A solid nod
and bear strong hands?

A worn-out shape
and teary eyes?

A smile that lights
up your face

...and my life respectively?

I've decided not.

Love defines you.
It's your shape
Love defines you

..and when I strip it down
to the core
There is nothing more
and nothing less

than the shape
I know so well.


Your shape is love.