I Never Knew.

"I never knew I had hands until the day I used them.
The first moment they, fat and new they, squeezed a finger they exploded into being.
I don’t believe there ever were arms that hung down my sides, invisible and empty
until they moved my hands up and out, exploring the space I found myself in.
My legs were invisible and never really existed
until the day I stood and took a few shaky steps into my future.
Has this voice always been here, was it born when I was born
or did it spark into reality the first time my lips fumbled towards
loose sounds that somehow resembled words;
if only to the well trained and unconditional ears of my mother,
if only to the proud, without knowing why or where from or even how,
ears strapped to the sides of my fathers head, not yet hinting at gray?
So too with these eyes. Never had they filled the gaping holes in this skull
until the first color and light and shadow and motion decided to
grace them with their presence and stay for awhile.
When that day comes, and come it will, that the light no longer dances
the color no longer bleeds the shadows fall flat and the beautiful motion
fades into stillness once more, will these eyes cease to be?
I first became aware, suddenly and acutely of the lungs that fill my chest,
these trees turned sideways and sharing a single root, when they filled
to capacity only to be emptied when all breath was stolen
and stolen by something bigger and better and so much More than myself.
Perhaps it’s the using that gives weight and shape and substance,
color and texture and presence to the pieces that decorate these bodies.
Perhaps it’s the using that lets us believe in the having
and when use stops having stops and we slide back into whatever came before
we were we and these hands and legs and voices and eyes and lungs worked in concert
to make us tangible. Make us real.

Perhaps.
But one thing I can say without a perhaps or an if
without the need for a maybe or a who knows.
One thing I can say with certainty and the proud affirmation despite the sadness
in the connotation:
I never ever ever ever (three times for emphasis so you cannot choose any option of disbelief)
knew that a heart beat or pulsed, thumped or sang inside this cage of ribs
until you.
Until these hands touched your skin, these arms held you while you laughed and tighter
when you cried.
Until these legs ran this tired soul towards you and these feet wrapped around yours
in the perfect quiet beneath those sheets. Until this voice,
shaking and terrified but confident in the truths they had waited so long to shout out,
instead whispered three words that would set fire to every reason to remain silent
and change the course of life forever.
Until these eyes, my love, these lucky eyes finally found home inside the colors of yours
and the light that always seems to land in your hair. Until the shadow of your face eclipsed
slowly across the surface of mine, like an event that somewhere else people with special glasses
and cardboard machines to protect their perfect retinas would crane their necks to witness.
Until you. Until you were the something better and so much
More
that reached into my lungs and with both hands
stole every last drop of air, pausing only to hold them before me and cast them back
to the world like an offering, a smokeless incense to carry away your own wishes,
your own prayers.
Maybe it is the using that gives credence to the actual possessing and owning and having and holding.
If so, if this is how and why it is how it is then I know, now, and have always known
This heart started it’s beating and pulsing, thumping and singing
the instant, the very instant, I found you."