Perfect Love Casts Out Fear

Like a crystalline ice sculpture,
Jagged edges filed and pointed ends rounded to conform,
Fear lay heavy in the pit of my stomach.
I closed my eyes and narrowed eyes stared back at me through chiseled stone;
Fingers in my ears, creepy voices still squeezed through twisted sneers and ridiculed me.
I smiled tentatively at blank expressions and balding foreheads,
Knowing that they only obscured malicious thoughts
Portending my death.
Imagining freedom, I soon saw shadowy figures that flitted in my peripheral vision,
Swiftly disappearing when seen. Inexplicable footsteps constantly unnerved me.
There was no rest; the icy numbness of fear would not relent.

The metamorphoses of fear have no limit.
Proud towers, marbled warriors, pulsating neons and dusty stack rooms,
Beasts and demons, men and angels, dreams and visions,
Points on maps and matrices,
Objects dead or alive possessed by fear cause fear.
Beauty’s guts, noxious fumes of Raphael’s saccharine oils,
Ripped and wadded compositions of note-short masterpieces,
Lying dead on the floor, fear is perfection convulsed into dread.
I have felt it all. Formulas fail.
Laughter does not signal fear’s absence,
Nor tears its presence.

I was afraid; until another set of eyes peered out from my own and,
Confidently stared back at the chiseled stone.
I was afraid until another voice, using my vocal chords, spoke back to the scorners,
His forceful smile animated my own lips,
Furrowed the foreheads and countered the evil thoughts; shadows ceased and silenced.
Love, proven by some wood and a handful of nails,
Ice-melting warmth that brooked no challenge to its power,
Over-powering softness that resisted the menace of hammers,
Even as it accepted their earth-shaking blows.
The metamorphoses surrendered, their powerless illusions exposed.
Perfect Love is a person. He made the fear disappear.