Indelible

There are things that happen in the indelible. First, time becomes a character in the story, exerting control over both the narrative and the heart rate. It moves through each room, touching old pictures and hidden spaces, spinning a cocoon so thick it makes normal movement impossible and must be pulled apart like spun sugar

Next, change

Old you out to sea, pared down, bereft

So you

Write down promises

On every doorpost, every lintel, every exposed beam and limb

Let the words become living things

A forest in the house

She calls him

Revelation 19:16 NIV

[16] On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:

king of kings and lord of lords.

She calls him King of Heaven. I like that

Evoke the way you effortlessly possess

The sky, the clouds, rolled up One Day for something new. I want to gather these flocks of clouds, the silvery colors of this matchless afternoon

Wonder what is written on you

Wonder what you will write forever

On me

Mark me

Mark me out as your own

This Little Girl

I want to say so many things to

This man who does not really see

“This little girl”

But I know You

See her, see me, see them

All the little ones who

Need a God like You

Take my sins away, heal my wounds, stay until I am well, bring justice in your wings, never blame the victim, never stop searching for treasure

You

who were, who are, who always will be

Just You,

and “this little girl”

And all the pleasant pictures

I have been having the mildest of stress dreams–quirky, bureaucratic hotel check ins, attempts to gather the hard-to-shepherd, things washed away. I know why the dreams have come, and I doubt they will leave me soon, even if the heat and intensity of a gathering sun should cause them to lose their inevitable grip and dissipate

I turn to morning songs and croak out broken praises

Think I should listen to the Gospel, but chose Isaiah instead

Because these are old

And New Testament times

And we are all in wont

of fierce faces

Isaiah 2:16 KJV

[16] And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.

Coronavirus

All over the world

Right now

People just like

You and me

Have begun to

Live in fear

Of our own

Invisible, creeping

Spinning, spiny, tiny, inevitable invisible crowns

Empty shelves

Where once cellophaned signifiers of

All that can be wiped away–

Canned food, pasta, string cheese, milk

Fomite transmission

You and me

Gone

Don’t worry, Darling

He took all our thorny little crowns

Smoothed each out

Like a girl braiding her sister’s hair

Singing some sort of song about

A proper crown for the One True King

Come to save us all.

Staring at the Door

I draw lines transecting the doorway

Vertical then horizontal

Drab, heavy old thing

I cannot open it, cannot move it toward me, as in this scenario I would have no opposable

Thumbs, thumbs dug into the wet clay of our terrible

Mortality

While You

Let me through every time

To this endless deep

Expanse of night, the wind, the grieving girl who would

Tell you never leave