tell me if this is all true

""

Going the Distance

At the long bar of smoke 
and dark whiskey, voices grinding 
into splinters. 

Men who build their lives on steel, on rubber, 
on things and the making of things 
line the bar, huge as boulders, 

a stonehenge of backs, necks, forearms, 
knuckles roughened raw, 
the wide palms of work. Out of the rock 
of bodies, their man talk, the slow turn of shoulder, 

I suddenly know: 
that one.

I know my worn woman’s body; 
how it would fit to the center of him 
how I could travel from this cold harbor 
to the light, which only I can see, 

that would drench this dry weariness 
I carry like a sponge. And for that, yes, 
I would go the distance, allow my flesh to become 
a soft drum, a refuge 

he could destroy. 
I would tow his body down and down 
into my sheer well of grief, salvage us 
from fault, mistrust, the hunger 

he could never name, or allow me to name; 
but I would allow, for just that moment 
when he lies spent, open as an opulent shell 
and I see myself in him 

a soft wailing 
eased from its casing of stone.

Veronica Golos 
thank you, huntersheart

(Source: ahuntersheart)