Both

It is being noticed, when you were standing alone, certain that the world was spinning but you were just here for the ride -or why else would you have grown to believe with absolute certainty that you’re invisible, without a reflection or the proof of a shadow- never having been looked at or looked for, during all the looking you’ve done…during all the helping you’ve done.

It is being helped, when you’ve only ever been the helper, parentrified at a tiny age -having done a damn good job at raising all the youngers who had no one else, and the olders who let you- and you look around, exhausted, spent and no childhood to show for it (just vague memories of kittens and roller skates and scars from some stitches you needed for cuts you earned trying to lift others out) and you now need a helping, loving hand.

It is being loved, by first being shown, by One who’s perfect, that you are accepted…by One who shouts throughout the heavens and Earth your worth…by One who bursts into your aloneness, touches your scars and redeems you from that place of invisibility and arrestedness…by One who delivers you from the sins you had to commit out of survival…by One who dies for you, because if you’re to fully understand your worth and become redeemed, that’s what is needed.

It is being needed, and knowing it is OK to need -since you are actual and not invisible, human and not God- and, deciding you have arms and time and heart to give, you’ll never again be diminished or depleted, for you know now your value and limits and you’ve found one who knows theirs, and there’s the give and the take extended, intended to honor you both.

Space

That game

Of Life

I won

Back in late 1980-something

Which was

To be

For fun

You turned into a federal offense

Hear this

My rules

You’re done

You can no longer share My life

My time

Or be

My Sun

Unprocessed

I’ve come to decide

From necessity

The crickets’ cry of silence means

I’ve left my beloveds speechless

In the very best way possible

Stunned, like they’d just seen a light

Its source before now unknown

And decisions of whether to fear

Or to collaborate

Are yet unprocessed

Hats

Ev’ry step a mystery

Sometimes not the pretty type, but just a bloody mess

We each walk the same road, trying our utmost

And whether witness, victim, detective or criminal

We’re left watching, or seeking retribution, a solution or redemption

Hoping

Oft’ to no avail

Blue Damsels

Diminished

From the wind, I think

Or what’s riding on it

Chilled uncertainty?

Despite any positive prophecy or revelation

Holy, scholarly, or both

It’s what troubles me to the core today

And my sisters too

So let us weep in any and all ways tonight

So the morrow we’ll feel as ourselves again

Whole

Mormon Row

With grateful paintbrush in hand, I am leaving space for you

A beautiful a background, careful, I capture the sun

Find now open an area broad enough and close enough to the sky

That your shoulders might fit and comfortably give rest to what is

I know not the shape of you, tho’ your colors, you’ve made clear

Bright-dark weathered patina that complements my tempest greens

Vivid chards of amber to offset my mountainous blues

Your easy frame an open window, a willing respite

Fighting your way, straight to the foreground of me, for me

Withstanding, will they find us, the very wildest of climes