All that’s left is scarring.
There is no skin.
There is no way
To be whole again.

I don’t want to go; I want to stop.
Not to leave, but to cease.
There’s nothing but more pain
Underneath every release.

You said Your plan
Was worth the wait,
But where is a love strong enough
To penetrate and dissolve this hatred?

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
And I am so sick here.
You promised, and I wait
In agony, in a cemetery, in fear

So achingly alone
In the dark fugue of despair
The rejected wife
For whom, no man cares.

Aren’t You a God of justice?
Don’t You care for the poor, the broken?
Do these tears fall between the cracks:
Heaven’s forgotten tokens?

Be You.
Forgive me.

Father,

I am here.

And I know You are.
Today, I feel overwhelmed,
But I believe You
Are still at the helm.

Thank You
I don’t deserve what You do.
Thank You for promising
You will make all things new.

There is no corner of my life
I feel joy to inhabit,
Except the one that dissolved-
But I can’t have it.

Forgive my failure
To give proper thanks to You,
To enjoy Your good gifts,
Or give credit where it’s due.

I am grateful, but sore.
I ache to be done
With the days in between
What I’ve lost to the run,

And the promise You’ve won.

I can’t imagine feeling good again.
Every victory feels like an empty wind.

But I am here.
I’m still all in.

Okay God,

I’m not going to lie:

This last round hurt.

It knocked me flat,
Just about six feet down,

Give or take.

I had everything on me
And no one to brace me.
The ones who wear Your name
Added more weight to my back
The ones who loved themselves
Couldn’t love anyone else

I lost a lot.

But You warned me beforehand
It would happen that way,
And it did.
You were right
And You were enough.

You still are.
You and I,
We’ve been through a lot of hell
Mostly alone together.
We’ve both been burned
Here on this razed earth,
In the throes of our best hopes
For arsonists, from the ash
I don’t know if I smell of smoke,
But when I close my eyes-

I can always smell it.

You shook me awake tonight:

Keep my eyes open.
Keep them focused ahead.

I am weak and small.
I knock over easily,
But in You

I have never given up
For long.
I can be knocked down,
But never held there.

I stand again;
I fight.

I was born in the fire,

And I am small, but within me
Is a fierce inferno.
It may die down in the storm,

But it does not die out.

It builds back in full blaze.

The readiness is all,
And I’m ready to fight again.

Let’s do this.

What’s next?

I hear the cards shuffling.
I’m all in.

Deal.

Protect the love You planted
In the secret depths of me
While still in the womb,
Before it could be,
Allow my love to live
Though I have tasted death
Let my thin exhales
Be like Your own breath:
Comfort and forgiveness,
Restoration and purpose,
And honest,
And worth this.

Cover my sin, and
Set free my love.

I am the ghost
Who forgets she is dead.
I wander bare-toed
Screaming at strangers
On their own land
For speaking in foreign tongues:

They do not see me anymore.

I was a little girl here.
I played hide and seek,
And sang my little ditties
For the men I thought
Were noble merchant sailors-
Pirates! Pirates,

And I was lost.

I have a mortal wound
That no longer bleeds
Every face at whom I stare
Reflects murky visions of murderers-
Every voice over my shoulder
Is the vague whisper in my hair:

An echo of the last whisper I heard.

They all took turns at the stab
Did they dump me in the river?
They were unafraid
Because I am unloved.
My Father returns.
He rides through town.

He is searching for me.

Oh, the mess He will find!
Wandering out of place,
Out of mind, out in the cold-
Like Phantom Ophelia
Waterlogged and wrapped in weeds
Dead skin sticky with river alluvium.

What will He think of me in this state?
What will He do to them?

Across the bridge

Inflated heads on weak spines.

Cold hearts.

Clenched fists.

Cloven tongues.

Degradations and assumptions.
Apathy and derision.

Desperation thrown to the coyotes,
Put out in the cold

To die

Alone

Maligned.

May justice roll like fog
Over the ones who lick their teeth
At widows in whitewashed bones.

May grace restore
The pleading heart discarded.

What is the hidden substance?

Reliable when contained,
Framed on the wall
Like mercury.

All in flux is all in danger,
The stranger to stay
In shadow.

I pray, in wing and talon
I bate at every shift
In light

At rifts, I screech in alarm
If harm discerns
My exposed brood

I yearn the end of my quest
To rest on the breast
Of the great mythic unicorn

Named Security.

Can she be found
In this place of brutality?

Staring out past rooftop and treeline
Into the stoney-blue Illinois skies,
Waving like fields of heather,
Clouds in ever-shifting disguise:
Beauty is the lullaby that soothes
After the dark surprise.
Truth is the root that defiantly grows
Through the blackened ash of exposed lies.

In the consummation of Beauty and Truth,
Love inhales, and opens her eyes.

Light and sound.
Water and air.
Collisions and containments.
Gravity and propulsion.
Static resistance and dynamic flow.

Hidden wishes
In a state
Of constant flux.

As the dove departing from the ark
Sent out like a sonar ping
To the end and back again
With awareness under wing,
So these synchronicities increase
In both meaning and frequency
Reverberating as sound waves
Off the inner wall of shrinking
Time, closing in

Closer to the end,
Completion and consummation:
The eternal rock mountain.

Daniel 2