you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
This final line echoes line three of the second stanza in its short, choppy sentences and its reference to food as fulfillment. Jesus offered bread and wine for spiritual enrichment, and this last line does the same. The ‘feast’ is the capacity to grasp life in full; the ‘life’ belongs to a complete, joyful person.
Love After Love