Broken Open

By: Kyle Elden

It’s all right if we don’t agree, the long shadows of dusk still
spill across our faces, the sun dipping away into another evening

It’s all right if our love isn’t neatly packaged, sitting on a shelf to admire
beautifully wrapped in crisp cellophane, glistening in department store
manufactured light, making you wish that you could have it

It’s all right if we’ve searched each others faces endlessly,
locked eyes, traveled across the rocky terrain of time together
holding hands, but no longer know home in one another’s arms

It’s all right if after the blizzard settles, and I am in love
with someone else – I sit in a car heat blasting,
enveloped in music, heart broken open – staring through a kaleidoscope
of brown wiry tree branches and blue sky – sun bursting open after days of darkness and the smoke of exhaust rises as an offering of gratitude to God

It’s all right if a decision isn’t made, if uncertainty hangs
like branches still full of frozen rust colored apples that never made the fall

It’s all right if longing spills forth like a driver on black ice who has lost control
and the car slides toward on-coming traffic, spinning down
hill, around sharp corner, banging into guardrail, coming to a halting stop
and somehow emerging unharmed, shaking with gratitude and shocked into
slowing down and paying attention to what it is the heart truly desires

It’s all right if things are messy when the company arrives
if things brake and you cannot find the glue
if the door is locked and on a ring of many, you don’t possess the right key

It’s all right if perfection is in what appears to be broken
if God’s design is somehow greater than what we could
fathom from our perspective, but is beautiful and right
despite the sharp edges of pain and the diamond
which lays in the piles of dirt
we so badly want to sweep under the rug