To the wounded:

Try everything you can to love deeply.

Even after you can wade no further through the muck of others,

after blips on radar screens staccato herald the dangers,

love even that stranger.

Who knew she would act this way?

Who knew he could be this way?

But you will still settle into the insecurity of failed defenses.

You will still weaken your front lines until there are no obstacles before you.

You will still bare yourself.

Few have ever dug a well without a drill.

But you?

You’ll drive yourself through numbed conversations and awkward silences until you strike the truth again.

You’ll hollow out the farrowed places where lies once stood,

pull at the roots of Emotional Distance,

hunt the pipelines of Grace and Understanding even after striking fools’ gold,

encounter counterfeit artifacts,

unearth uncertified relics of a friendship once shared.

You, excavation artist:

You must love beyond the extent to which concern for you extends.

Love beyond the measure of your meaning to them.

Fold over a gut wretched with the feverish convulsions of heartbreak

and scrape once more at the surface of Love.

You'll be dizzy with confusion,

disoriented by the desire to starve no longer.

But dig again.

Time each attempt at penetration by the rhythm of connection; that elastically sporadic thing we call “relating”.

And dig again.

Whenever you strike it-- that space where it almost feels worth deepening--water it.

Water that same seemingly infertile ground you once dampened with your tears again.

And again.

Bleed over that same point of contention.

Again.

Hover your brow over the soiled places between you two and perspire your way through the onset of desertion.

You may only harvest memories worth pruning but you will have labored no less.

You will have tilled until something's ripened: a shared laugh, a sentimental occasion.

You will have burrowed and watered your way through multiple failed attempts to reap something other than pain.

You will have plowed into dried promises and hoped for the drizzle of commitment-- slippery but hopeful.

You will have walked fields of misunderstandings season after season,

searching for one sprout of synchrony,

until you've been spotted

bright and blinking between the rhythmic beats of another heart,

extracted from some ancient tomb,

harvested from what you once believed was barren.

You will have poured over and into until you've loved deeply,

until you've loved healed.