my wasting bones are unsettled by kisses. how your lips graze my paper skin and i am an origami crane — catching fire in waking sunlight. watch me love you terribly. kindly. fatally. watch all of my shadows burn bright for you, my darling, into the sweetest, sun-soaked surrender.

i am sorry but my bones will always love you like hell, like it was war, like the world needs to end in the process, like the hand of god, taking you out of my ribs and now he needs to return it back where it rightfully belong. i will always love you, in godless sacrilege. i am sorry if i don’t know any other way.

i can never love you the way i claim — delicately and without violence. i remember hating flowers and broken seashells, and my grandmother, hand-sewing pastel dresses. deep down, my bones are raised on stories of ancient wars and biblical battles carried from memory to memory, a string of generational blunders — i am made of my father's bitterness and my mother's denial. so i will love you with corruptions and apologies, with bled-out  veins, giving in like an emptied river, with all the poems i have read and forgotten, and with everything that makes me finitely human.

Dearest divine distance, I pray, be more familiar,
Be kinder, be closer, I can't yet make out your figure,
Omniscient darling distance, could you beckon me to you?
Desperately I've called out in the dark, be nearer that I may be new.

Sometimes I feel they don't want to see me.
Sometimes I feel they don't want to see me around them.
Sometimes I feel I need more light even I just have a little.
Sometimes I need the way I can see myself even when I always get lost in many darkness.
Sometimes I feel  I am bad when I am doing something and they want me to be perfect one.
Sometimes I feel I always do wrong.
And
Why?
Sometimes,
I write
and cry
and also pray.

How Do You Pray?

Do you pray in silence do you pray with peace?
Do you pray when standing or on your hands and knees?
Do you pray with head bowed low or hands raised up?
Do you pray to satisfy your spiritual plate and cup?
Do you pray for the blessing of others or ask to be healed?
Do you pray to bring down the kingdom and find truth revealed?
Does it matter so much how we pray as that we do?
Does it matter what we pray or for who?
Do you pray with simplicity and words within reach?
Do you pray with eloquence and is it something you can teach?
Is there a better way to pray?
Do you pray from the depths of your heart with every fiber of your being?
Do you know just how much prayer can be freeing?
Prayer truly changes us on a level most profound
Soaring high with feet firmly on the ground
Prayer is more than just words
Prayer could be found in the songs of birds
Prayer is beyond sound into silent surrender
In prayer you never hear about return to sender
God will hear for he is here
Our tears of loss and our tears of joy
He feels our laughter and our pain
He knows our triumphs and our struggles
He has been down that road before
He loves us to the end beyond life beyond death
In eternity He waits for us to be with Him once more
He calls us to follow wherever he may go
He sends us out in the field to sow and reap great yield
We toil and labor and in time it is revealed
The reason for our presence on this Earth we call our home
And none of us should go through everything alone
In a greater plan we have an integral part to play
And sometimes we ask that when we pray
Prayer like conversation is a two way street
We give and take and in the middle we meet
It is more about relationship than it is about the act
It’s a promise of heart and soul more binding than a contract
When we pray, how do we pray?
Are we saying all the words but going through the motions?
Or struggle to find a word but have the greatest devotions?
To just be silent and present could be something strong
Maybe only tears when everything seems to be going wrong
Maybe there is more to prayer than it seems at first glance
Maybe it’s okay and maybe someone gives prayer a chance
Maybe someone’s life is changed by reading this simple prayer
Maybe someone reaches out and finds there is something there
Maybe all of this will make a difference maybe I’ll never know
But maybe just maybe you’ll see the love I pray to show