How can you just leave me standing alone in a world that’s so cold? This is what it sounds like…

Imagine a man who reads Greek and Hebrew, knows his Bible, his New Testament, conversant quickly and deeply in Protestant dharma. Imagine the good-natured laugh of a man who’s had kids, divorced, remarried, lost most of his teeth, runs a fast-food joint in Greenville. Imagine the warmth, the male pulse, the blood that runs into the root of the body. Imagine an intelligent guardian who is too clever and lets the boundaries slip.

Imagine the quick imagination of a lonely child and the scarcity of intelligent conversation. Imagine the child with too much space. Imagine genius with no direction; no guidance. Imagine pubescence for a child with nobody around to shame her for masturbation. Imagine the frustration in discovering the limits of found objects and fingers, wanting more, and the mind that always wants more, the merging of sexual energy and creative energy – one doesn’t need a catalyst to combine energies that were never truly separate. But the confusion that emerges in the mind as the muse, the ad-hoc guardian and potential teacher becomes a sexual partner and the desire, deeply embedded in the body/mind for partner to become lover, and the knowledge that this is theft, this is wrong, I am wrong. But I still need. I still love. But, love is always wrong.

And I am standing here, in the rain. I only wanted to be in the rain with you, with him, with the Beloved. I only wanted to know you, to see you laughing, to see you laughing in my rain.

After all of this, I still love you. I still believe in you.

I still believe in me.

*****

With all my respect and love to Prince. Thank you for the inspiration.