Nesting

Hollow and shallow reigned my name,
Taunts that remembered only shame
And echoes reached across my chest,
The girl forever lost in restlessness,
The bane of her own wandering.

"I will not wait for the dead,
Or wake the swine up from his bed,
I will walk where the living tread,"
Said the girl lost in wandering
The going and gone in her steps.

Her lips, my lips, just pondering.

Love stayed once, a while,
Stroked my cheek, so soft and mild
But he left and brought instead
The waking horror, the walking dead.

He was not Love but merely Lust,
Mustered in silent, ancient rust,
"We must," said he, in thundering,
"Test the waters and churn the sea,
Turn the tide into the lee,
And I will wait for only thee,
For thee."

Yet he left me, lofty high
Heart strewn in streamers across the sky
Lust only knows to tear apart
The sordid and forlorn lost heart.
Silence led me to my knees,
Beckoning with broken pleas
To rid the hidden hollow in my heart,
The abyss of pestilential emptiness.
"I dare not stay awake for this,
For this."

Love came not on gaudy wings
Or far-flung empty, fairy dreams.
He came as whisper, as soothing voice,
A smile, so tender, a gentle choice:
"Choose me and hollowness will fair,
Like dust, open to the air
And I will nestle in your chest,
No longer the sting of emptiness,
But passion like a fiery flame,
And you will no longer remember shame.
And you will know Love's true name,
You will know my true name."

And so I sit here by and by, nesting
Love so bright, nestled nearby
In a once vacant, empty lot,
That silent, unkind, bandaged spot
That Lust so damaged, that one so cruel
who called me only "damned" and "fool"
But Love decided to save.
He calls me by another name,
"Beloved" and "Blessed,
Take comfort and rest
For I have always known your name."
And so Love hopes and dreams and stays,
Walks and laughs and eats and plays,

And so Love stays.