Her Beauty...

"...may I kiss you...may I kiss you there?..."

I wish I understood more.  I wish I knew all things.  Wishes that only come true when one is old and all mistakes have been made.  Where you look back and begin your sentences with "if I'd known then what I know now...".  That place in time where your chair is your friend.  Where wisdom seldom does you any good anymore...it is now for others.

Tonight I rip off my skin and replace it with the panoramic digital imagery I have of beauty.  A beauty that few actually get to see because they never really take the time to look.  Some get to sleep next to it every night.  They even get to hear beauty say "I love you".  They give nothing but get everything.  Never knowing what they really have...never really caring enough so as to just do "what is required".  The careless try to rob beauties sheen by creating insecurity and self-doubt through sheer neglect.  Where she is then left lonely in a home full of people...now needing to be rebuilt.  I don't know what's worse; seeing it and not being able to keep it...or not seeing it at all.

Beauty is broken and left by the side of the road.  Beauty is anguish at determined greatness that only arrives for hours at a time.  Beauty is hurt and maimed while continuing to hold on to hope for her healing.  Beauty is laughing through the pain and in the process...making others laugh too.  Beauty is self-sustaining under pressure of heavy weight and burden.  Beauty is passionate and knows how to devour flame through release.  Wife, mother, lover, girlfriend...friend.  Titles that do beauty no justice. 

My heart is thankful she can find something in me worthy of her.  I may not be able to keep her but the anguish of such a thing is tempered by what my heart has been privileged to witness...her beauty. 

~Moses Apollo