Conversation By A Dusty Highway Poem by Sarita Brown

God sits next to me on the busy highway
and says nothing.

we have been traveling for months now and he is getting
edgey.
i told him that the last turn was doubtful, but you know
god, he never listens to anyone.

that is not fair.
he listens to me.

I tell him that the broken heart is not
a tree or a brick, but a wheel
and is too bent for its normal use
i can put it on a wall,
use it for decoration, try to plant something
in it that will grow.

He says, nice try, but that's not what
hearts are for, mere display.
they are not pictures or vases or easels
or sculpture
they are alive and they want more.

he assures me that there is a healing mechanism that will
turn this last break, this toughest one so far
into a fiber so strong
it won't break that same way again.

but that means, i murmur,
that it won't love that way again either.

he turns away from me to watch
the double deckered trucks flying down the road.

'love is the combination of all the people
you have ever loved and every person that
has ever loved anyone or anything
and each person
and each love
and each strand is a fiber of Love
and the strands break and new strands come.
its painful and real.
its hard and lovely.

its not damage, its organic and it will
it will
it will
be ok.

How do you know, i ask him
how can i be sure?

he looks at me with the laser
light of all his truth
and i cringe a bit. he needs to learn
to tone that thing down.

It's what i do.'

we are silent.

have You ever loved and lost?
I ask.

the gravel spits up at us from the
roadside and makes divots in his cheek

'Every day'.
he says.