more in this dance

Step through the door who sits there on the far side, awaiting? My attempt to heal I connect to what in them is human or broken. I on this door side with my fears and powerful knowledge of pain - not theirs but mine. And so I open the door and step in. They sit inside the door undressed or clothed on the chair or table, alone or with the loved one they want me to touch, what? Their body, their soul, their mutual or solitary pain and make it gone. And I must face them - human, alone but maybe we can come together and know their pain on one side of the door. I step through the door ad she wants the drugs tat have been too freely given. I step through the door ad they expect me to be smeone from long before. I step through the door and his fear is greater then my best salesman's smile. I step through the door and the child is the tortured parents offering. I step through the door and I am not who they want me to be. I step through the door and their pain is mine, they give it freely. I step through the door and I know the source and I can drain the abscess - inject the joint, reduce the fracture, prescribe the drug, be all things, all-knowing - wise, powerful, competent. I step through the door and they love me for who I am not now; nor ever will be. I step through the door and the time is short; and then we pull apart like I should never have come. I step through the door twenty or more times each day. A new person each time; sometimes met before, but they were then - not now and I am today me, who I am - to meet and greet this new search we both shall take together as we renew to be the pair of lost and suffering souls in such a pitifull world of pain. Can I come through that door and be the gift of everlasting joy, of peace and solace, of painless life that has been promised? But they have forgotten that such is not the case. So we sit across from each other after the door has closed and we two in this room - try to come together and know that one human is able to reach out and touch another in just the simple light and presence of love. But they are full of their days burden and the next room's door awaits me. Will we be reduced to the simple scribbled words on the small sheet with illegible and latin insignia of care? When there could be a less toxic and costly way to touch and show we really know one another? ...to care, to touch, to cure, to heal - before we both must separately go back through the door.