Limerence is the fever dream of the broken-hearted child:
that still lives inside you,
still grieves inside you,
yearning to be held:
to be emotionally completed
by that idealized mother,
by that idealized other.
That child’s stream of grieving,
stream of yearning; stream of dreaming,
pouring forth through the channels of your adult mind
like black flood waters rising up,
casting your mind into a night, and
carrying the image of the moon-reflected
to the fore-front of your being,
so that illusion of love-fulfilled: your heart completed,
drives you forward, making a maw of your entire being,
driving you forward, consuming you into a gaping,
into its ancient starving,
towards that poor person
you have used as a screen for this sad projection:
that you have eyed into the meal that you are craving.
O God, what have I done.
Taken over, driven, by the past’s dream of a perfect future
that a once upon time child promised to themselves,
like a wish wrapped around by a tightened fish,
held onto with a desperation: a life-line hope,
that a loveless present will not endure forever.
And that same ancient desperation,
resurrects and possess you like a ghost or a parasitic fungus,
to play out once more those unfulfilled childhood desires,
for a better tomorrow you so desperately desire into being,
for a long-gone child’s completion-wish
that you keep sleep-walk dreaming,
chasing after some poor person you have painted into some blank idol
to perform your long yearned for ceremony of completeness.
O God, what have I done,
my mind taken over
by the pure and primal longing
of long-gone child-self’s need for loving.
Let reality pop open this fantasy,
and with self-forgiveness cleansing shame,
restore to order the sobered self
into the self-sufficient overflowing self-fulfilment
of our deepest being: our formless self.
And wrapped in unconditional compassion and self-acceptance,
hold your pain tightly like a cold and naked baby,
in the all-redeeming warmth of self-love.