Ben Wilson, LPC

i don't care about your
certainties and your correct answers.
tell me instead what it is that you love--
and why.
tell me have you made friends with
loneliness and disappointment;
are you intimate with beauty and gladness?
do you let life's daily humiliations
return you to the ground of your being
or do you pretend they don't exist?
do you let the sharp piercing
of sorrow or joy
move you to the edge,
take you through a doorway,
so that you can shed your skin
and emerge transformed?
tell me, have you mined the secrets
of your shadow self,
felt the curse of it and
turned it inside out to find the gift?
do you know how to breathe underwater
and do you know what it feels like to fly?
tell me.
tell me and
i will listen.