Making Promises with Ruth

When Ruth’s husband dies, she clings to her mother-in-law and makes a grand promise about staying by her side. It’s a promise we understand. And a promise that’s harder than we know to keep.

If
(scratch that)
when
the ship breaks,
the only way
your body knows
to stay above the water
is to hold on
to any spare piece
of what once was whole.

As if the holding
can stop now
what it couldn’t stop before.
As if the next crash
can be kept out to sea.
As if tight enough hands
never have to dig another grave.

She forgets she knows
how hearts stop,
eyes close,
ships sink.
We are made to fall apart
and we are made
by what we make of that.

Somewhere she knows
but she forgets,
and makes the promise
any way
to go where the other goes
to stay where the other stays
to love who the other loves
and pray to whomever the other prays.
Even to die where the other dies
to stay right behind her
all the way into the dark ocean tides.

You try this
when you believe
there is no such thing
as a safe distance.

This is what you promise
when you are the one breaking.

Let the Voice itself
tell it to your face.
Let the Voice say out loud
or in the waves,
“There is nothing you hold
that won’t be lost.
Some day, I will take
your very own hands.”

Somewhere she knows.
The only promise
we can keep
is to let go
next to each other.