Umbilical Chain Of Love Poem by Lillian Susan Thomas

I always thought I'd be a nun -
Accustomed to a meager maternal love,
Cleansed of all touch,
Thin as a communion wafer.
A life of dedication would be a relief,
To give purely, invisibly,
Adrift in a sea of grace,
No possibility for rejection.
Could such a thing really exist?
I doubted my own aspiration of it,
Even more its reality.

For love between us was a struggle:
I, bound in a chain-link net
Of my hated dependence;
You shoving this burden away.
But I always returned
When I reached the limit of how far
I could go without you,
Jolted back by needs I wanted to deny.
Never caressing, but spurning each other,
The only way we could prove
We were connected.
Our hearts welded
Iron chamber to iron chamber,
What else but metal tempered in fire
Could have withstood
The structural strains of our wars?

Both strong, we never broke
Each other, though ore coursed
Molten through our veins,
And pain piled upon pain.