You told me you were trying.
I told you about the time
I threw up so hard I started praying.
I saw stars in my hair
and thought they might be angels.
But it was just the acid.
Just the light.
Just me, alone again
in a bathroom that never loved me back.

You didn’t say anything,
and that said everything.
You texted “sorry”
like a magician pulling shame from his sleeve,
then disappeared
like a good lie.
I stopped asking you
to prove yourself after that.
I just started watching
to see if you ever would.

Maybe I made the whole thing up.
Maybe you did say something.
Maybe it was kind.
Maybe it was cruel.

Maybe the light flickered
because of bad wiring,
not heaven.
Maybe I was just sick.
Maybe you were just tired.
Maybe none of it meant anything.

But then why
do I still dream in that fluorescent color?
Why does the silence still have your shape?
I built a chapel from our last conversation.
Tried to make the ache holy.
But I was the only one kneeling.
And no one wants a martyr
who won’t shut up.

You said I was unwell.
I said, Amen.
You said I was always bleeding.
I said, Isn’t that what makes it a miracle?
Because if this isn’t a resurrection,
then I’ve been dying for nothing.

I gave you the ugliest parts-
even the bathroom prayers,
even the version of me
that asked God to make you gentler.
You said, “I didn’t ask for that.”
I said, “Exactly.”

You weren’t the end of the world.
You were just the earthquake
I canonized.
The tremor I learned to waltz with.
The reason my mouth still tastes like salt
and I call it grace.

So if God ever comes back,
I’ll know how to greet him:
on my knees,
already emptied.

They tell the tale as if she was stolen.
As if her cry was the end of her story.
As if the earth swallowed her whole, and she never learned to breathe in the dark.

But they forget—

She did not remain the trembling girl in the field.
No, she learned the names of shadows.
She walked the black halls with bare feet,
and the stones remembered her.

She tasted pomegranate not as punishment,
but as initiation.
Each seed a vow.
Each burst of red a remembering.

Down in the underworld,
she was not only held—
she was met.
She was mirrored.

They do not say how the crown fit perfectly.
How the throne did not bind her but belonged to her.
How even the ghosts bowed, not out of fear,
but recognition.

When she rose,
it was not as the girl who was taken—
but as the woman who had returned.

Crowned in both bloom and bone,
she carried the underworld in her gaze,
and spring unfurled at her feet
not because she had escaped death,
but because she had become life.

They do not tell you this,
but she was never just the queen of the dead—
She was the Queen of Return.
Of Resurrection.
Of the in-between.
And in her hands,
she held the keys to both.

"Crucify Him"
"Crucify Him!"—
The echo cracked the sky,
Yet He stood—
A storm in silence,
Pain braided with purpose.

Lifted high
On timbered shame,
He whispered,
"It is finished..."
and the veil obeyed.

Time hurtled forward—
Empires fell,
Hearts turned,
Billions touched by the whisper
Of eternal breath.

Death died that day.
Hell held a wake too soon.
He made a theater of their fall—
Stripped shadows,
Shamed the prince of dusk.

And when the third dawn broke,
Graves gasped.
The stone blinked open,
And trembling winds whispered—
He lives.

Now,
Time bows to Truth.
The Saviour reigns,
Not behind clouds,
But in crowned hearts.

Death swings a broken sword,
Still raging
In a war already lost.

This month I call you Saviour.

Mostly, instinctively
I call to you as Lord-God and Father.
Typically these are the names
I call to mind at early dawn.

But this month you are Saviour
as I become more acutely drawn
to my need to call on your saving grace
to draw on your sacrificial willingness
to cast off the trappings
wrapped up with heavenly glory
to embrace the blood and the mess
that comes with small town nativity
and ultimate betrayal in the big city.

This month I address my Hosannas
to you, my loving, risen Saviour.

A jet black shellac record spins
seventy-eight times a minute.
Its label bears a lady ’round the pin:
She strums her lyre pictured on it.

It’s a flat earth of forgotten tunes
that spins on an axis of steel
through heavens lit by a lyrical moon
filled with the stars of bygone years.

The label’s lady of the lyre
smiles up from her grooved time machine,
her strums reverse the stars’ funeral pyres:
On each rotation her lyre gleams.

Beyond the grave, voices I hear
defy the dark passage of time:
They sing, resurrected from yesteryear.
Her lyre scores each lyrical line.

Each scratchy hiss and tiny pop
I hear from the disc’s dust and scars
reminds me of a radio telescope
that points up to distant quasars.

Alas, the needle drifts further on
‘til it reaches the groove’s final string
and then the tonearm waits for a new dawn
when this time machine once more sings.

Why, Oh Little Ones, do you stop and stare
What you are seeking is no longer there
You walked beside him for three years
The very Word of Life was in your ears
He died and rose and appeared once more
To prepare you for what is yet in store
He laid His holy hands upon you
To confer a spirit of authority and truth
With his power you have been sent out
Trust in His plan and do not be in doubt
Do not stand there frozen and dumb
Time is short and there is much work to be done
Go you now out into the mission field
And gather for the master a bountiful yield