The sun wilts through
The windowpane
And I warm under its wings.
What graceful days are these
To chime away hours in solitude,
To wait for resolution
To a question asked again
And answered only in song,
Patience,
And absolution

You are a crystalline castle filled with an oceanic virtue that rises and falls as I breathe in deep. The sight of you still stuns me into a silence that rings in marble halls hemmed with ornate stained glass. I will never be wise enough to know the great chasms you have fallen into in your grief, but I promise to be there to lift you up. The silhouette of your body cradles me as I sleep, a comfort so fully realized that I've known it only in my deepest dreams. I love you completely, knowing your heavy and seeing your dark. None other ignites a spirit inside me that soars above the highest sight. You are a masterpiece among what some may call wreckage, I know is the most precious gold.

I find myself stopping in a crowd of people and time slows still. Their laughter, their unpredictable movements, the fights and the resolutions and the bonding of brothers--all quiet. I am left in the fabric of things to wonder at the tapestry we call a culture.

How am I to know what is proper when all have their own true mothertongue? Who can teach me what to say when all I know is jumbled and disheveled based on who I've been and what I know?

I leave behind a southern legacy of liturgy and doctrine that outlines exactly what is human and exactly what is not. I step into a society that constantly years to fill a void--please Lord, find us someone who knows the Truth.  

Their apathy and nonchalance is false; bravado is left wanting. I know they they all cry out for connection and seek it in flesh rather than spirit. I am caught in the midst of the pursuit of happiness and the quest for morality. I know not what brings joy to humanity, I hike towards that river and hope it is not run dry like all others.

In the study of psychology, I have found so many places where words fall short and the great carnal animal within all of us takes precedence, demands attention, seeking comfort in a world that often overlooks those that need it the most.

Love is a fragile, timid thing that is most often hard to find and difficult to voice. Instead, we lash out in aggression to hide that inner child that needs a tried and true comfort of a known embrace. We seek forgiveness and express it in anger, manipulation, meeting our needs however possible because this is America, after all.

This is all we want in our sequestered human heart, the beginning of redemption.

Wonder wallows
And wades awake
Watching and waiting
For a grave mistake.
Out of the dust
Comes revelation;
Out of chaos,
Revolution.
We seek and find
In solitude
And grow
In destitution.
Will we learn
What we yearn for
Only in
Absolution?

How tenuous
Life is—
Delicate
As a dragonfly wing.
We hold fate
In our hands
And love
On the edge of a kiss.
Fragility
That speaks:
We will never know
More
Than this

How can we feel
Human
When all we know
Is horror
Inside a mind
Meant to create
Kingdoms
And instead
Harbors calamity

How often we feel ashamed
When our skin could glow,
With all the ruin
We have survived
And turned into poetry,
All the defeat we withstand
And walk away from,
Leaving yesterday
And braving tomorrow