How do people stay true to each other?

On Faith


by Cecilia Woloch

 

How do people stay true to each other?


When I think of my parents all those years


in the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever


longing for anything else—or: no, they must


have longed; there must have been flickerings,


stray desires, nights she turned from him,


sleepless, and wept, nights he rose silently,


smoked in the dark, nights that nest of breath


and tangled limbs must have seemed


not enough. But it was. Or they just


held on. A gift, perhaps, I’ve tossed out,


having been always too willing to fly


to the next love, the next and the next, certain


nothing was really mine, certain nothing


would ever last. So faith hits me late, if at all;


faith that this latest love won’t end, or ends


in the shapeless sleep of death. But faith is hard.


When he turns his back to me now, I think:


disappear. I think: not what I want. I think


of my mother lying awake in those arms


that could crush her. That could have. Did not.

 
“On Faith” by Cecilia Woloch, from Late. © BOA Editions, 2003.

FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022

“If we want to test whether we truly belong to Christ, let us look at how we behave toward those who have hurt us. The Lord asks us to respond not as we feel, or as everyone else does, but in the way he acts toward us. He asks us to break out of the mindset that says: “I will love you if you love me; I will be your friend if you are my friend; I will help you if you help me.” Rather, we are to show compassion and mercy to everyone, for God sees a son or a daughter in each person. He does not separate us into good and bad, friends and enemies. We are the ones who do this, and we make God suffer. For him, all of us are his beloved children, children whom he desires to embrace and forgive.”

Pope Francis