Friday, August 16, 2013

Ink

There's an ink stain on my dress

It reminds me of when your pen broke for seemingly no reason
I was washing ink off my hands for days

Much like you
It won't seem to go away

Crosses

I started wearing crosses on my jewelry 

Like saying that it would be alright to wear a shirt of a gas chamber with a bucket of acid on my shoes. Like all tragedies become public statements shouted by good intentioned teens with no foot to stand on. Everything loses it's steam after time after the story becomes just a story and no one remembers that war touches everyone and most of us most of the time don't have a leg to stand on...

The reality behind sacrifice is lost in moments. 

I started wearing crosses on my shirts

I saw that crosses were in this season, and it's all about the season when I'm clinging to my youth and this isn't personal. 

It's never personal. 

I've been looking for a life of conviction. I've been looking for a reason to live because I know that it's so easy to die these days. 

Conviction is sewn into my clothing. A symbol on the side of my shoes that I might look at one day and ask myself what weight my faith carries because I've plastered my salvation on my shoes and they carry me just fine. 

My salvation looks like misplaced sticks 

And I often wonder why it doesn't feel real, why I can't seem to think of the cross when I stare my sin the face and decide to repent later. 

The gravity of my salvation fades away like a memory, like a story that used to make me cry and now I tell perfectly. 

I don't want tragedy to be the only door to the reality of a cross where life was given for me. 

I want to find the cross, find love, and sit there until it sinks in and I understand.

I want to understand. 


Monday, August 12, 2013

Chill


It's a chill
That sits in my bones laying dormant

The feeling attached itself to my body when I was 12. He said he really like me, until he stopped answering as I dialed and tried to reclaim my dignity in each number ... each ring...

I have often wondered what side effects of this earth will follow my soul
When does this earth stitch itself into my being permanently?
What kind of damage can't be undone...

I've tried to patch my wound with
The effects of a fallen world
Tried to say that eventually
All these feelings go away
Prayed at night that if I can't take this chill from my bones
At least it could be less frequent
That the spaces be fewer and farther between

That love actually conquer all

Friday, August 9, 2013

Humility

There's been a prayer 
Embedded on my heart since before I knew to look there
Etched in fine print
Lacking secret and longing 

There is a purpose 
Posing as a prayer for the moments when I would beg for something to pray
To care 
To feel like I was meant to and brought to my knees with a calling 

It's been waiting


I grew up like most girls who lack simplicity 
I weaved through years looking for answers like they were hiding
Looking for meaning like it was meant for me 
Thought my mind could contain a solutions to the injustice around me

Humility... 
Absent from my existence since the day I was born 
Weaved onto a prayer etched on my being 

I saw tears as a problem until I realized that I was made for mourning 
That suffering was stitched into my skin 
Like a bond between me and humanity stretching to God 
And there was only ever one road leading to where I was meant to be
Paved with suffering and lined with grace
If only my feet would reach for the pavement
My heart would stop bracing for the fall
Let the fall be my salvation
And live a life of suffering
Bleeding purpose into lifeless bodies

It's in the prayer
In the middle of my room where I sit with my ghosts

I've asked God what to pray
It occurred to me that I could be asking for all the wrong things

He told me to come along side suffering 
To join Him in this journey
That humility is in existing in the middle of the most human part of humanity

Our ghosts
Our pain 
Our calling

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Names

I name everything and everyone.


I've even named my compulsive need to name.

I call it a "human condition." It felt only fitting that it be named the same as so many other things we can't quite put our fingers on but they feel uniquely... human. Cliche.

It's the first box.
The primary label
The "Oh, now-I-know-where-to-put-that-in-my-head."

Like a skeleton of the first construct that serves to make things... make sense.
... Speaking of a human condition


Everything has a place
It all makes sense
It works
There are even patterns in a shuffle

And then I was born...

It's a human condition.

It's where nature and nurture make a pact and settle for confusing us all.
Taught like a shelter against evil
Like bad things don't happen to good people
And we're all good people...

... I've composed these thoughts of large boxes containing smaller boxes and still smaller boxes.
I've sorted out ways to keep everything where it belongs.
I built walls like a rosery
Half prayer and half superstition

At the end of the day maybe I'm just looking for protection
Just trying to understand
As if I could

And somewhere I feel like God is sitting wondering why I insist on insulting his intelligence with mine

Understanding. Making sense. Boxes. Names.

None of it makes sense...