Between The Times

Broken teeth zipper

broken jaw slackhang loose

A forest of three-legged tables

buzzing filaments of naked bulbs

children’s broken bicycles

piles and piles of nuptial china

shattered and discarded

A dog with one eye

gnawing at his own leg

Withered stare

into a city with dust clouds like locusts

The bonethief’s wife

stirs her cauldron of lecterns

green cards, computer chips

and virgin hopes

What is is after

and beneath and before

The unleavened bread 

leaves crumbs in his path

leading through the 

rhythm of Israel’s worship

to sun shining

on wounds no longer hidden

The puddles from last night’s rain

reflect the blue sky

He walks over, clothed

in white of birch bark

fancy tablecloths and lit cloud edges

smiles and says

       as if we’ve been talking all along

Didn’t you hear? It’s finished

And so it is. All the noise

of battle softened to the din of

dinner pots clinking and children yelling

in a park.

Where he has walked to get back to me

blooms red

In lengthening shadows we talk

about tomorrow

I have always believed, but I have not always followed. I have always believed, but I have not always felt. I have always believed, but I have not always believed in a God who is so detail-oriented that He would prepare me for heartbreak, and then carry me when my heart did shatter.

It could have begun ten years ago. Or maybe it started when I said the word "love".

While I was cleaning three nights ago, I found myself standing in the middle of my room holding a gift. A scarf. From the man I thought I would marry. He gave it to me three years ago. It was a gift from his travels. It is black and gold, woven delicately, exotic, soft, and warm. It is everything I believe in, beauty and function. It is the only thing left between us that is still functional. I wear it often, and it has become a mourning shroud. I wear it, I get compliments in it, I think of him, I miss him, I feel flashes of anger at him, then myself, then him, the flashes accelerate until I blush, my body feels the heat of deep pain, and then everything burns to ash and I am left with a hollow sadness.

As I stood there holding this gift, this tie to him, but also this tie to all the baggage and pain, I felt God telling me to hang it up on the nail above my bed. I did. I could not bear to see it hanging there; somehow it was easier to see it draped over a chair, in a heap on the floor resting easily on the little black dress I wriggled out of after a night out. It hurt to see it sterile and unused. I stared for a long moment, a moment pregnant with sadness, and just as the tears welled, He told me to pick up another scarf of a similar size, a gift from a dear friend, and hang it over the other scarf. "Cover it", He said. I did. Now I was crying. I stood on the end of my bed to reach and carefully arranged one gift scarf over THE gift scarf. I didn't understand why I had to do what I did, but I was obedient, largely because I had not energy to defy.

Later, candles lit, snow falling,  He said "because, I will cover you". 

the answers we get

If there is a moral,
it may be written as this:

The tracks converge
because of bending light.
They never actually meet.

Artists call this
perspective.

Its other name is
solitude, or love.