Connection
It’s an alchemy.
It happens without intent.
And quite frankly,
It can’t leave through intent either.
What is it in us that reaches out and wraps around the soul of another?
I’m not sure.
But what I do know is that it is as strong and fundamental a part of us as those I’m sure of.
Maybe even more so…

And ….. there is you.
It’s been a long time,
Yet I still feel like I’m swimming hard for the shore and at the same time the tide is pulling me out.
That drive forward and that pull back.
It’s not that I want to get away from you
I never did.
Perhaps that’s the problem…
I sometimes think my only choice now is to sink.
Get under the currents
Go down under the surface
Let all that water fill my lungs.
Perhaps then,
When I sink so deep and my feet touch the sandy bottom
I will be able to walk away.

© Elsa Holland

The very lovely and very talented Elsa not only writes poetry for soul food, she writes books too. Lush books. Books you might find in a Velvet Basement. You should go visit and let your fingers and senses linger at elsaholland.com

Whenever we make love, you say
it’s like fucking a crash –
I bring the bus with me into the bedroom.
There’s a lull, like before the fire brigade
arrives, flames licking the soles
of our feet. Neither of us knows
when the petrol tank will explode.
You say I’ve decorated my house
to recreate the accident –
my skeleton wired with fireworks,
my menagerie flinging air about.
You look at me in my gold underwear –
a crone of sixteen, who lost
her virginity to a lightning bolt.
I didn’t expect love to feel like this –
you holding me down with your knee,
wrenching the steel rod from my charred body
quickly, kindly, setting me free.

– Frida Kahlo