blood and poetry

I memorized a poem this weekend. It was at the moment when bloody knuckles no longer seemed beautiful or valiant, but, instead, a far weaker symbol. The line between glory and pain is thread-thin, but chasm-deep. A line like a scar.

You do not have to be good. If you tell me to count the stars, I will chase the number, not the promise. In the vastness, I will lose sight of the mercy.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. Memorizing a poem has a vastly different character when it isn't for a grade. You read the words aloud a hundred times, over and over, tracing it into your skin and your soul. Sometimes, you need to hear the kindness in your own voice.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. You whisper it, sleepless in bed. It's a prayer. You get quieter as you go on. It's a lullaby. Meanwhile, the world goes on.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely You scream it alone in your car, make yourself promises instead of threats. the world offers itself to your imagination

Calls to you like the wild geese –– harsh and exciting You scribble it along the bottom of your class notes, heavy black ink lace.

over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Your scars will fade with time. The poem will dim. There will come a time when your glass soul will need a different prayer.

But today, with the marks of a struggle still fresh on my skin, I need to steal someone else's words. I need to steal them and keep them for my own; use them to tell myself the things I haven't learned to say.