There’s a backlog of sentences,

Words trapped behind my

fear to face myself.

They pile up like a dam—

thoughts that threaten to

Heal me.

We took the beauty of expression,
of movement,
of sound,
of our uniqueness and labeled what was “in” and what was “out,”
what was “civil” and what was “uncivil,”
all the blurred lines of art outlined in thick black marker
and packaged into orderly containers—
rules and boundaries
Monetized for the Civilized.

Heads down,

we pull Apathy onto our right fist,

Arrogance onto our left.

What separates us from the savages?

Compassion.

Maybe this vibration we feel isn’t the

powering up of the powerful but the

gathering up of the gatekept.

History tells us

over and over again

that if you dehumanize and denigrate long enough,

the rejected will lift up their once-hung heads,

the anxious will open their once-wrung hands,

the unheard will sing their once-silenced songs and

find that a strength has been built up

while bearing the weight of their pain.

What would a mind feel like

had there never been

a punitive god living inside it?

If there’d never been a voice of judgment,

an obsession with failures and shortcomings,

would I be able to think more clearly?

If I’d known mistakes weren’t proof of my sinfulness

but proof that I was a learning and developing human being,

would I have more grace for myself and others?

We wonder at the atrocities of our yesterdays

from our seat at today’s table,

history books spread open to images of

human beings traded in chains,

piles of skeletal bodies in Nazi pits,

or little Ruby parting a sea of angry picketers.

I can’t catch any of the thoughts;

They ping from left skull to right skull

Like balls in a Blackberry.

It was a weird time to become a woman–

Caught between two narrow visions of femininity:

Your body is God’s precious temple,

Holy and not to be a temptation

And

Your body needs to be better so

Every part of you needs to be

t h i n n e r .

But sometimes, when we lose our mattering,

The question starts feeling like an accusation,

The mattering morphs into a competition.

Our eyes narrow at our fellow man,

Our fellow competitors—

Because when they seem so full of mattering,

That must mean we don’t matter at all.

When the depths pull you

Like a fish on a line

Into the darkest waters

And you wrap yourself in the

Words that worked

Back in the pale blue—

Back when you knew—

They stick like a wet bandaid,

Leaving your wounds open to the

Sting of of the saltwater,

Anger circling the scent like a predator.

Pressure to be a “Godly Man”
Only made them experts at pretense.
Emotions being dubbed as feminine
Only made them experts at repression.

The Boys grew into Men with strong bodies and weak hearts,
Corroded by shame, exhausted from pretending,
Men who gripped the Promise of Power so tightly,
Needing the role of Husband to make the pain go away.

Yet, truth isn’t relative, they say, and drop the megachurch mic as if that means something.

As if God never changing means we don’t either.

It's the fear of choosing wrong and losing ... something. Missing something. Something you'll never have a chance to un-miss.

They handed me a white box.

A perfect cube, unstained and unmarked,

“This is God’s design,”

they said with a smile.

“Climb in.”

I watched as they handed them out one by one.

One to me,

One to him,

One to her,

Down the line,

One size fits all,

Each box exactly the same as the next.

So I cut out my heart,

feeling by feeling,

and placed it in my Bible,

trusting that must be the best place for it,

hoping I'd get a return for my offering,

a reward for my sacrifice,

waiting for Truth to fill my open wound.

It was never about greatness

But goodness

And the warmth of it

calming our fears and insecurities and damning thoughts