hours on the trains, warm pages

Smiles seem to have wound their way back around my vocabulary. I've been testing it mostly with strangers, funny strangers on the deep long trains. Easing my way into the waters of the Basement, that fluorescent cellar of true ideas and grumpy people. Smiles there feel good, too. But smiles when you ask how I'm doing? Terrifying, but suddenly here and the words well even came from my groan. So much tearing and daring to speak truth, to declare in honesty who I am, to decide earnestly who I will become.

Lewis's words are reaching deep, deep, deeper than I wanted.
We were blinded in Eros, worshipped his terrible feet, and pleaded our lives for him to be among us.
There was no depth our love could not reach and, and so there was no hope in our grasp.
I hated Venus, course but sultry lover, wanter of all that feels like you.

You loathed, and perhaps still loathe that Eros, he that bound you into me,
gave you no door to open outside of my own.

But Venus, she cut me and I did not feel whole or good or loved in her presence.
She's a dirty lover, she's a course replacement for things that should breath life.

And the quick pain of shame tore the veil of Eros around us from my eyes and out of my senses,
haze lifted, lines sharp, who are you?

I ran, clawed, buried myself beneath so many pages of safety, of Tolkien of Steinbeck of Wolfe
oh oh and Micah and Isaiah, and some strange strange psalmist and Solomon himself...
and tore Eros away from me, though he's always at my feet
and in my sleep, reminding me of love that I left.

Of you, but I called YHWH's heart to be more than yours.
I screamed and wept and sat quietly, slept fitfully in every sort of
desperate and resigned attempt to love YHWH more than you,
to bind Eros to my deadened flesh
and something beautiful to Hashem.

Husband, the true Eros himself; please bind me to you.
Yeshua, here is the bride, here I am and I'm not clean.
Venus is mingled in the scent of my hair, but I've cut it off.

Shaved and homely and in all my lack of glory
here I am. I am for you.