vow

Vow

There’ll be loss you say you know you say and you swear you’ll be ready for it the way you swear a swear to a lover to a beloved to a passion impassioned to a surge in the resurging understory of your keening blood coming up from beneath bottom like it does like it has like it and always has and always will you swear seeing while not looking or looking and not seeing out that clarity and a last and final decision are the same thing and this is the way you want it to be and you step out of the crowd still holding or letting go the liturgy will change over the years the hand of the one you’d just vowed your life to: spouse or child or your own straight or crooked spine or god or God or the Adversary and the devils something someone while the great surgeon of all the universe perhaps makes the swift incision and without you sensing or even knowing you begin to seep to bleed and it will stain everywhere and nowhere be everywhere and  nowhere but down to tarn at your feet and keep the creatures there intent however and with whatever you have peopled them that keep you upright and creeping to the hem of your skirt to be snagged and snared by them your whole vowed life I know it will be hard it will be a hard life I’m ready for it to be a hard life: the subjugating defeat of a frigid infant in her crib for instance the husband hugging the bedpost after the stumble dumb news on the surgeons face after bringing her around after the child’s been made to look absolute and accessible and sleeping and picture this faultless family squeeze your fist into your teeth picturing them and get married and get risky and get… you’re not ready, you’re not and you’ll never be.  But go.  Go anyway.  Adjudicate that vow.  Never stop moderating that vow.