Dear little
one,
God’s newest dewy-eyed
creation,
here begins
mortality.
You’re a
warrior, love.
Only the
fighters make it here.
The days will
end that
angels are
your playmates,
and the
lessons will begin with
swings to the
sky and bloody knees,
sticky-sugar
fingers and a stomachache.
Your toddler
eyes will widen as you find the seed,
which you
buried long ago in the Earth
has turned to
tender, fragile life.
The day will
come when you realize that
each tender,
fragile life, in the end,
will again be
buried deep in the Earth, and
The angels
will hold you as your tears teach you to mourn.
You’ll learn,
love, that they don’t exist only in Heaven.
They live all
around you, flesh-veiled grace-
they are the reason there’s good in the
world.
There will be
times your giggles turn to tears
in one breath
and you’ll realize, as you try to explain your sorrow,
that words
have given way to depth,
your fears
are deeper than the dark,
and
sometimes, all you can do is feel.
You don’t
know him yet,
but he will
set you free.
You will meet
heaven,
and find your
tongue incapable, forever,
of adequately
speaking your soul.
You will
reach, silently begging him
to hear,
behind your words, the
universe of
experience unable to be spoken.
You’ll taste
death when he leaves.
Sorrow will
run rivers down your skin,
Love and hate
will rule together and
when you fall
to your knees,
you’ll burn
with screaming anger
and
whispering sorrow even as your lips
beg God to
bless his dear, beloved soul.
You’ll lie
between clean, white sheets in the pale yellow morning,
feeling the
draw between your soft, still sanctuary and
the bright
wild world, and many nights
your heavy
head will be ready to return much sooner
than your
vibrant mind.
You’ll learn
memories are not transcendent-
you’ll ache
in the midst of beauty at the thought
of losing
something you’d never missed before.
Yet if you
pay attention in excruciating pain,
you’ll feel
the beauty growing.
You’ll stop
one day, in your tracks
your tiny
feet dwarfed in Christ’s footprints,
and ask why
roses have thorns.
He’ll take
your hand and explain that if He didn’t give you mountains,
you’d have
nothing to climb.
You’ll learn
little one, that
to be human
is to experience every contradiction.
The friction
in our muscles, in our minds, in our lives-
it’s the heat
that fuels the flame, and we are created for nothing less
than to carry
the fire.
(Fall 2014)
