Most of the time you just don’t
go there,
because it’s too hard to come back out,
hurts too much to fall so deep inside.
But sometimes you just have to visit
for a while,
or the part of you that feels
can dry out,
become too brittle,
to walk you through another day.
So you take a breath,
a deep one,
and plunge in,
grow accustomed to the bitter cold,
the dark and lonely waters,
as you pull down inside those thoughts
that lead nowhere but the vortex,
echo loudly in whorls of sound,
as you hit those wires stretched out like blades
across your love.
Yet somehow it’s the love
that pulls you back again,
the belief down deep inside your bones
that what your heart desires must be possible,
and those fears of what seems to be inevitable
untangle,
so your feet feel free once more to kick hard,
propel you up and out again to daylight,
where the first thing you see
may be sunlight on a newly opened rose.