Poetry
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That Scandalous Day
Celebrating that scandalous day flesh became divine and eternal permeated temporal. The day the sacred rested with the shunned.
Leveling hierarchies by going first to the lowly. Breaking down the separation between body and soul. Unifying flesh and spirit. Thwarting plans of the powerful. Blurring the lines between miraculous and ordinary.
Destroying shame to show us that our bodies are good, good enough for God themself. Coming close enough to us, to teach us how to recognize the divine in each other. -
The Dangerous One
“He tried not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
Being seen. That’s hard for me. In the past it always was safer to be small, to blend in, to comply, to fly under the radar.
I learned how to say and do what was expected of me, to not hold my own opinions. I learned to merge with other people, to reflect those around me instead of shining my own light.
Now, in a safe community I have been encouraged to take up more space, to stand taller, to speak louder, to disagree.
Being seen. That’s new to me. I am taking the risk of carrying myself in a way that commands attention; shining bright even for those who are not looking. I’m standing my ground when I know I’m right. I can demand to be seen, I can be the dangerous one.
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To Choose and be Chosen
To know and be known, to fully embrace all of who you are, to be accepted just as I am, and encouraged to be the very best that I can.
To experience a magic that takes on a life of its own, to be the recipient of pure adoration.
To choose and be chosen, and then to choose again and again, risk and trust interwoven.
Close enough to touch your soul, lucky enough to hold your heart. In awe at the depth of your mind; fully seen and safe in kind.
I have seen miracles; had grand adventure. But even the greatest of them cannot compare, to the mystery of two becoming one. I now know the meaning of love.
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Moments in Grief
Everyone has an opinion on how you should grieve, it seems
Even those who have never grieved themselves.
Either you are too devastated and you need to cheer up, get a grip and get back to it or you are too happy and moving on too fast, so your person must not have meant that much to you.
Social media is stupid because a paragraph or a picture posted is such a tiny glimpse into our actual, real and tangible lives and yet it ends up representing the whole of us. A happy moment captured is a very real, yet perhaps brief, moment in time surrounded by many other more complex moments. A smiling snapshot doesn’t show the tears later that night. But those happy moments bring hope, so I hold onto and share them. A sad moment expressed – dark poetry, vulnerability, admitting to depression – is not always a reason for worry, a problem to be fixed, or a request for advice or solutions. Waves of despair wash over from time to time and need to be fully and freely felt.
Going through grief can feel like living in a fish bowl. Suddenly the world is watching your journey and commenting publicly or privately on it; holding you accountable to what they imagine grief healing might look like. Most often comparing your real lived experience to an entirely fictional situation.
It’s important to me that my grieving honors the one I’ve lost – but that’s between me and them. I will continue to live unapologetically. I live and love and grieve for me and my person. No one else.
Sometimes grief looks like calling out of work because you were awake all night with nightmares.
There are moments where grief looks like sharing a laugh with someone dear, discovering there is still room left in your heart to love and feel.
Sometimes grief looks like breaking down into sobs at a memory, a sound, a smell. Hopeless, lost, broken.
Some days grief looks like plunging into an ice cold waterfall, shrieking and laughing at little pockets of joy discovered and beauty celebrated. Intentionally chasing the goodness in the world, because if you don’t go looking for it, you start to wonder if it’s there at all. Maybe you’ll catch a tone of their voice in the splashing waves, a glimpse of their eyes in the sky, their soft embrace in the breeze, feel them smiling down on you from the trees.
Every facet of grief is equally valid and important. The rise and fall of breath, the ebb and flow of tide. Coming and going, sorrow and joy. Everything in it’s time. -
Blurred in a Blinding Light
Life goes on, they say
But what if I don’t want it to?
Time heals all, they say
But what if time is my enemy?
I want to be frozen in time
Back when it was only a few hours since I had heard your voice
I need the world to stop spinning
At that moment when I had just seen your face
Days pass, weeks ago, months come and go
It all blurs in a blinding light
Memories fade, details grow faint
Time loses meaning
Continuing ahead is the scariest thing
Farther each day from your warm embrace
Plunging deeper into the unknown, further into a world void of you, the inevitable I fight against.
The pain will lessen over the years, I’m told
But what if the pain is all I have left of you?
You’ll be happy again one day, I hear
But what if happiness without you is sometimes more terrifying than mourning you?
New horizons, they exclaim
But what if that feels like the end of the earth, a precipice of a great divide, a chasm of black nothingness?
Trapped on a prisoner train, taking me far away
To a land where the center of my universe is but a blip on a past distant sea
My heart and my soul, now a pretty thing on a shelf
The life in my veins, now a chapter in a dusty book
My spark of life, my flame, my light, soon to be buried in years and decades of expired time.
You are frozen there, I’m pulled by the tide
You are a rock in a river current, I am swept downstream
Time marches me further and further beyond those shared years when I was most alive
You are forever young, I grow old
The world turns too fast, rushes past
Onward, onward, but I’m reaching back
Hold my hand, I’m losing my grip
Follow me, our souls intertwined
I will return to you, my heart, my home