tea ceremony

When you've plumbed and traced the shape of that ache,
you will find you can draw it forth as a blade
to cut paths through the phantoms of could
and should be, that are placed in your paths
by the enemy. Who,
disappointingly and undramatically enough,
is often you yourself, pulling
one of those subconsciousness snuggie cloaks
close around you and down over your eyes
in a sinister attempt at incognito,

but I know you

and you've been beginning to get wise
to that bastard's ways for a while or two
by now. Time to sit down together to a TEA AND CRUMPETS PARTY.

You two are ON THE SAME SIDE!

But it all begins
in examination of that ache,
with an eye towards fashioning it
into a defensive mechanism and multi-purpose
instinct-guided and -guiding tool. It is the ache
that is in you, in the shape of what is not,
that teaches us what's missing,
and the negative space in us into which it will fit.

It is strange that we want
or need such a thing. But it is only by feeling the shape,
by knowing our ache that we can make our eyes wise
to its possible fix, every wherever we come across its shape
in this profuse and abundant world.

Meanwhile, sit
Have tea, and linger

in this moment of getting to know

'til it hurts.