I sit and I watch the sunlight,
The way it dances through this manufactured Eden,
And I think I begin to understand what believers
find beautiful in faith.
The way it finds holes in that which would keep it out.
It sings and skips along those that reflect it.
It feeds all those whom choose to bask in it.
It even strains for those visibly just out of reach.
And yet I just can’t forgive the rarity of rainbows
on days it lets the clouds win.
Is it really so hard to understand?
Are you so guiltless?
In the minutes before I bend my knees to the dead wood of the confessional
I find myself confronting the horfrost
Of your persecution and my own confused shame.
You ask “Why?” And I find the heavy heat of incredulity suffocating.
As if you yourself are without the freckling on your conscience
And I alone have ever sinned.
Standing before you in this moment I am a gymnast in the cavern of my own chest;
Anxiety the hand waving about my rapidly devolving excuses like a ribbon.
My knees crack against the base of our private altar as the trumpet’s hollow brass rings out and the ribbon falls still.
I wrap myself in self preservation, felted and cheap though it is, and choose to lie a little longer.
At twenty-eight I’ve put away childish things.
I still believe that people get what they earn
and reap what they sow.
I still believe in fairy-tales, dragons,
and monsters in the dark.
I still believe in white knights and glass slippers.
I still believe in true love
and good conquering all.
I still believe
but in the past ten years I’ve learned
that believing something doesn’t make it real.
The desire or expectation that life is to be lead with immediacy and moments are to be responded to instantly with little time for reflection, meditation, or the process of simply “being”.
Today is one of those days that I wish I could cry.
Even just a tear or two.
It has to feel better than the heavy smile I keep dragging up my face.
642 Poems and More 