When You Hurt

You share with me your pain
Or some of it
And although the reasons for your pain
Cut me deeply
Still when I am with you
My own I put away
And the only impulse I feel
While you are beside me
Is to soothe and comfort
You

I ache that you ache
I want to ease it away
I wish to take your sorrow
Into myself
Break it into tiny pieces
And scatter it to the winds
Absorb it into myself
Leaving you only sure
Relief

My own sorrows
I will feel on my own time
I will curl into a ball
And let the hot tears
Fall
Sometimes silent
Sometimes loud
Mostly alone

If tears fall in the forest of my lifetime
And you are not there to see them
Did they ever exist?

~~01/02/2006