I’m all broken up
Fractured where I have lost,
Cracked, threatening collapse,
By rejection, betrayal, the cost
Of losing my place as a mom,
As a matriarch, a valued wife
At the height of my gift
I was ejected from my life
And I live on the peripheral
Of the organism I grew
As a disparaged servant
And I’ve cried out to You

For remonstrance and restitution.

But then today, I heard the men
Solid and efficient
They’re more productive
Because they’re in better condition.
I can’t keep up, and if I can’t
Replace them then I can’t complain
It doesn’t matter what I’ve lost;
It matters what the kids may gain.
You don’t just see what’s been
You see generations to come
What is of the utmost importance
Is giving them the best chance to run

The race You set out before them.

I can’t provide for them
As well as the men,
And as long as I’m providing
I can’t cradle them again.
I’m spent, and I might not
Have much left to give
I think I’ve been wrong to teach
Them to live how I live
Tender is defenseless
In a world with no defenders
If they are better off without me
I surrender

I withdraw the case I filed.
Let them all tarry on,

But don’t let go of a single child.
Thank You for loving them.

I shouldn’t have rested;
I should have gone home and held my son.
The weight of all I cannot do,
Of all I leave undone
Crushes me to ground.

The threats surround me
On all sides, all the time,
The consuming cruelty
Pursues a thousand crimes
I cannot prevent.

Please Father,
Change my circumstance.

Put me in the hands
Of tenderness, for once.

My brother hates ladybugs.
Hates their crawl, hates how they fly.
He says he pops the shell
Enough for them to die,
But not right away
They writhe where they land
And he lets ’em

Because he can’t stand ’em.

I believe Your promises are concrete.
I do not believe
In my ability to hear what actually is.
I am deceived easily; I deceive
Myself at will.
You’ve said the impossible is secure
I’m stilled by how great the promise,
How long I must endure-
Whispers say I’m telling myself stories
To get through the night.
No one is coming
To put things right,
And if someone did,
Do I really have the audacity
To believe weighed in any scale
I have anything good coming to me?
This dark obscuration
Haunted by ghosts and jackals,
Lashed by leafless branches
Driven by howling cackles
Is merely the natural consequence
Of running with my eyes closed
But I believe in the beauty of stars,
The architecture of the rose

I believe the darkness is never dark to You.
You always saw, You always knew,

And I hope You have engineered

My rescue.

I don’t deserve better than I have received.
Forgive how I groan and grumble.
Seek out this lost and wandered sheep
Lead me into my abiding humble

Tender on the rope burns.

The wheels have been long upon the grain
Surely the hulls are cracked.
I cannot remember feeling whole-
There can never be a going-back

I cannot restore myself to my kids
Every day is more tedious than the last
There are monsters in every hallway
There is nowhere fit to pass.

I don’t want restoration anymore
What would I do with joy now?
It would be a garment inadequately sized
An inappropriate song for a broken vow.

I understand the prodigal reference:
I frittered it all away.
Whether I ever find a way home
Can it change the reality of today?

I wasn’t trying to squander it all
In the land of The Other,
I just knew I was never really welcome
In the company of my brothers

And they still grind their teeth at me.
I am displaced.
I follow Your promises, like breadcrumbs
Day by day

Into day after day after day
I don’t want life or death, waking or sleep,
Whatever part of me still needs breaking
Must be buried pretty deep.

It seems to me the engine
Has been pretty well disassembled.
And even in my complaints
I lick the earth and tremble.

I believe You cannot lie,
And You will accomplish all You say,
But hope deferred makes the heart sick
And today looked like yet another day

After day after day after day.

It’s the same pattern
On repeat, oh Father
How have I been so blind?
I’ve always felt like a bother,
And that was by design.

He encourages what I love
Until I invest and enjoy it,
Then he suffocates it slowly,
Until, ultimately destroying it,
He displays torn remnants of its carcass

And when my grief levels off, and
I begin to dig the grave I’ve had to measure,
He auctions off what bits remain
To indulge his basest pleasures
Wiping the fat on my funeral shroud.

He is evil and I am blind
But even as I learn to see
What am I going to do about it
Except cry out to Thee
My Just Father-King:

Deliver me from evil.

I was a vestal sacrifice
To a ruby-toothed beast
Whose gaze becomes salivation
Licking talon to lip in feast
At tender, unblemished innocence

In the dark, I believed
(Because I could not see)
How he described himself,
How he described me
And I was painted the monster.

Meal after meal, he preyed
As I apologized
For being hard to chew
And he prized
How easily I was consumed.

In chilled blood and thirst
He devoured more each year
Complacent with his prior serving
Enjoying my growing fear
More with every passing day.

Then, just once, he thrashed
Breaking open his lair
Light fell upon his filthy scales
His spiny tail- I saw him there
In all his slimy snarl.

I saw he was the monster,
And I was not.
Now he sees it in my eyes;
I know his rot,
And he hates me more each day.

He wants my eyes to go away.

I’ve been doing the best I can,
I’ve tried so hard, for so long,
But it isn’t enough.
I am not strong.

I need You.
My children need You.

Where are You?

You promised.
Please. Gently, God.
I’m so tired.
I’m so sore.

There is no One like You.
How I abhor the company
Of the teeth that grind,
The leering, veering exultantly
Proud antipathy

To Your Eminence.

You are the One and Only
True King Eternal
Your power not bestowed,
Not validated by the external,
But radiates from Your internal

Glorious Being.

No man can wave a finger,
Nor raise a fist,
But that You allow in patience
What should not exist
Until the darkness is dismissed

And hubris feasts on dust.

Fearsome Holy God
Burning up the darkness
Like an inconsumable constellation
Like molten metal, in starkness
To the cold hearts in this

Rebellious, faithless place.

You could withdraw
Your presence, Your breath
And the wisest wither,
All that would be left
Is even less than

A shadow of death

But You tarry, for now,

Until the hour

No man may stay You.