Compression

"Compression"

(“Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.” Hebrews 13:15)

His life once expanded, people traveled to ask his advice,
to watch his mannerisms and copy his reflexes. He was only
half of what they saw,
though the hidden half frightened him from daylight into
nightmares.

They etched his name on plaques and bylines,
brought babies with coughs for him to cradle,
sat him down around hardwood tables with
state committees. The governor’s wife presented
the award paired with a guitar-man statue on his
haphazard office wall. Musicians applauded,
and the sharp arc of his trajectory was combined with
just the right velocity to land him
happy once the hard work was done.

But his sad half never smiled,
dark side cold, stubbornly deflecting
the weak force attempt to turn it toward the sun.

Blind side hardly smiled,
cold side stark, visionless and pallid
though colors swirled around it,
the hidden half never upgraded,
afraid it would be discovered in its
perpetual monochrome.

His life once expanded, now the diameter of a dime;
pain limits his excursions,
fear authors the versions of every story he remembers.
He is few.

But he cries. He turns the music loud. He keeps the
doctor long to have someone to talk to. He loves
and does not know how to. He faces himself and
wonders how this all will end, with tears and pain
his dinner and desert.

But he cries. He turns to You. He keeps on
asking so he will not have to regret. Tomorrow
still frightens him, with so little room to maneuver.

But he cries…to You. And he knows You,
though all is puzzle and spiral, and thanks You
for hope that seems wickedly illogical. Hold him
now, he lays his lonely assumptions in the strongest
Hands he knows.