Only Listen

By Toni Amato

It has something to do with that old thin line between love and hate and it has something to do with wanting to smash the same thing you want to hold wide fingered and careful and it has something to do with faith, I think, although it is only on certain giddy evenings full of risk takers and soul-bearers that I would ever admit that. It has something to do with crying in the dark until someone touches you and then it has to do with letting yourself be touched and here I go, writing about being in love again, but stay with me on this one, hang in there a little bit longer, because the words spilling out of hearts, through lips and rustling pages just did that thing, that thing where the big immense opens up and here I am back to faith.

The knot that binds tight around our human souls is silence. The knot is shame and doubt and tongues tied down and what releases is courage, and a room full of voices daring each other, coaxing each other, murmuring and shouting and laughing at each other and what it feels like is thank you Jesus and what it feels like is coming home.

In the beginning, there was the word. Author of my being. And here are words, and like I said, the knot is all about not saying, not speaking; it's about not hearing the words we need.

And yeah, I'm writing about love again. I know I am, and you'll just have to forgive me, but I forget, sometimes, the way words can rip me wide open. But I never forget the way I can and do fall in love nearly every time a woman makes me cry and I have shed tears again. I have shed tears as folks bled ink onto paper, into my heart, and this is what I have faith in, this is what I believe in, what I crave like the junkie I am and yes, it's true, it's a jones, a deep and bone shaking one, but the knot unravels here, every time, every blessed damn time.