---

A bag of clothes, a box of books, another smaller box of letters and photographs & an old guitar are sitting in the backseat.


It's 3am and she's driving through the Blue Ridge mountains. All the windows are down, warm summer air billows in and sends her hair dancing. 


She doesn't know where she's going, but the warmth calls to something in her blood so she heads South. 


She'll probably end up on a beach somewhere in a little East Coast town. Maybe she'll sell flowers and jam by the roadside or find a little bookstore that needs help, she'd wash floors all day if she had to and wouldn't think to complain. 


It all feels like freedom. 


The air smells like rosemary and thyme that grow wild along the roads. The stars are so bright she can hear them breathing. A jackalope dashes across her headlights & is gone before she has time to turn her head.


She parks in the back corner of a gas station somewhere in the Carolinas & stretches her legs out the window, takes a few sips of whiskey and reads a while before she falls asleep. Lightning bugs dance in a nearby field to the voices of cicadas. 


Somewhere a voice is screaming, glass is breaking, sirens pierce the stillness of a quiet street, but she doesn't hear it & she never will again. Even in sleep she is smiling.

It is cold tonight,
leave a saucer of sweet-milk
out for the fairies.

I don’t know the last time I felt so light; as a cloud on a summer day or a sigh from a sleeping baby.

I think there might be daisies or daffodils blooming in my rib cage-

I think the sun may have seeped into my skin and found its way into my bloodstream turning it to rivers of honey-

I think my skin has begun to smell like pine and my breath like frankincense and myrrh-

I think the moon is watching me tonight with her wide mother eyes, wondering how I shine so bright-

I think I may ignite-

I think I may collapse like a star into the dark beauty inside myself and burst forth again in even greater splendor-

It’s almost too much and yet it’s not enough! I could drink of this river until I drown in agonizing bliss.

Heaven! Earth! Seraphim! Desert dunes! Raging seas! Cedar trees! Frozen fjords! Hummingbirds! Are you watching?

I think, I think I am becoming!

A poem flutters
in my chest with playful eyes,
I reach out my hand.

I wish that others could see you
as I do, Darling.
I wish they were here with us now
and could hear Flaubert’s love letters
dripping off your lips.
I wish they could hear the tenderness,
the ache in your voice,
reading those scandals,
for a love that deep and unashamed.
I wish they could see the joy that
flashes across your face
at the simple pleasure
of a charcoal line
drawn perfectly across a page.
I wish all the world could see you;
see your mind and heart
and soul as I do,
because you would receive
ceaseless love letters
from an enamored world
that would make even Flaubert blush.

“I am twenty-nine.”
Who thought those words could bring joy?
But I brim with it.

Your voice haunts me.
My aching for you is like a hint of perfume on a stranger's neck that sends me -for a moment- back to childhood to my mother's arms, her humming in my hair - 
a half-remembered dream slipping through the window into the night.


Will I ever know the taste of the air? I imagine it tastes like honeysuckle and laughter.
Will I ever dip my feet into your star-drenched skies?
Will I ever watch the sun setting to the sound of cicadas singing their wild hymns?
Will I ever wake to mornings heavy-laden with mist clinging to the pines, dense and fragrant?
Will my feet ever wear the mountain paths in prayer and wonder?
Will I ever call you home?


---

Thank you so much for reading.

People say to me, “How can you believe in God? You must know it’s all just a fairytale.”

And this is my reply:

Have you ever slept in the woods with no lantern, no light, and all the stars and moonlight blocked by the treetops? Then you know what darkness is, you know what fear and uncertainty are. That was my life. I lived in that Night. I can’t explain what years of darkness feel like as a child but it felt like a never ending night-terror that I endured alone.

Hearing God speak to me was a beam of moonlight piercing through the dark and scattering the branches to come and meet with me. He met with me in my deepest pain & loneliness, and He has ever walked with me since. I’ve never known a soul so faithful or kind, so easily pleased or so quick to forgive. He is the deepest, wildest, strangest sort of Lover.

So call me a fool for believing that Someone so marvelous could exist, and naive that He would notice me, and absurd that He would even go as far as to love me. There were moments I thought it too wonderful as well. But can you see why I would fling my life into His arms? Can you see why I’d trust Him with all my life, my soul, my heart? Can you blame me for giving Him everything I have and calling it too small a gift?

While my fragile frame still wanders here, I will be His with every inch of me I have to give. And should He take me tomorrow or decades yet to come, I will fall into His embrace with a sigh of long-suffering finally eased.

He is not so different from a fairytale because He is too strange and wonderful to explain. Almost too much to believe. But until you’ve felt the moonbeam fall across your face and your spirit quickened by its touch, and heard a silvan voice murmur through the windless trees, don’t be too quick to disbelieve.

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This is not a complete prose-y/essay yet. I’m still mulling it over but I thought I’d share what I have so far. Feedback always welcome!

**no image because I haven’t found one I like yet