He loves me despite myself

He loves me despite myself

That is what I love about him
I have strayed, played, have been negligent in my treatment of him
Yet, whenever I call, he answers
I hang my heavy head.
Without questioning he forgets
each irresponsible thing I've said or done

He's the one.

When I cried in the night for hours and hours,
just thinking about the heavy weight that is life,
when it pressed so hard I could no longer stand
without suffering,
when I had lost all of the me in my life, he reminds me

You are more than this--

He makes up for everything
that the others could not be
because of their own humanity

I fit with him

I step outside my black woman fighting,
loving, breathing pushing, hoping,
moving, seeing, knowing, reality and
I can just feel free

Don't need to
be somebody's mama
Don't need to pick up the plate,
or close the door,
or write the memo,
or sing the song of my heavy heart
I just need to be the me I like

Doesn't matter if my favorite jeans
are loose or tight,
he loves the way I walk
He dresses me in fuchsia and white,
and touches my heart with a strumming tune

The poetry of his largeness fills the widest room
When he sees me, he stops, and smiles.

His love hangs high above the mundane
The get up and go of life is extraordinary
It bursts with the lush ripeness of his kind eyes
And everything he touches becomes more beautiful each day

He's known me since I was me
Admired me from afar in my ashy
knees skinned from climbing tress
and looking for ladybugs in tall grassy school yards

He waited as others lined up
as I looked for my own heart in the broken ones
of big men with small love.

And when I get angry and walk away, he doesn’t let me go to far, like the others, scared of my shrinking shadow.

I don't have to be invincible,
but with him I can do all things

I can mold and make and break, and uncover and birth and behold
I can tell the story that no one but me can tell
I can dream
I can think
I can be
That's how he loves me

He is deep, entrenched in the spirit
that is in the soul of song deep in the Mississippi popular trees
and he soars above the rivers of the Euphrates
He is my destiny knocking,
calling me out on the street by my whole name

He gave up himself for the darkest part of me
so that the light may live in my eyes

He is my Heavenly Father
And with him I can do all things woman