What is real?
Pain.
Pain is real.
It wanders around these words.
And sinks in the shadows of my heart.
I can feel it sometimes:
In my body.
In its joints.
Creaking and craving attention.
In my thoughts it lingers and whispers
stories of the past and how I should have planted the tree in the sun instead of watering it so much in the dark.
It is there:
In my future.
When they leave.
Or I do.
Or we all do.
Its name is pain.
I have called it this.
I have brought it out and into the light.
I want to see this pain. I want to know it. Breathe its smoke and exhale it into the sky as an offering to God.
So that I may ask:
Why? Why this pain?
And so He may say:
"Because pain is real.
Pain is real.
But love," He'll say,
"Love is the ultimate reality."
