How it Sounds

How it Sounds

(“I, I am the one who comforts you. Why should you fear humans who will die, mortals who are treated like grass?” Isaiah 51:12)

I know it often sounds as if my life is in the shadow,
the night has blanketed my hope for the light,
and I know you would rather hear flights of faith
than the grainy verse I write.

How can I be true and not publish the truth?
How can I believe and not admit my doubt?
How can I heal unless I admit my pain?
I will not know one thing within and show another without.

From a thousand miles away you cannot taste
the tears that have dried upon my face.
From twenty-five years away you cannot feel
the spears that have left their jagged traces
of scars and fragments of flint still stuck deep
within my heart.

Do you want my words to trumpet mountains
when there are none within sight?
Do you want my poems to scatter friendships
like seeds in a garden with a sleight-of-hand
that produces fake letters I’ve written myself?

I don’t blame you. If I heard me, but did not know me,
I would sound like Job’s comforters too. I’ve quoted the verses,
pointed their faces to the sun and blue sky, only to, bemused,
wonder why they never told me the truth again.

If you cannot bear my breakdowns, you cannot help me heal.
If you are scared of my meltdowns, you need to turn around now;
or seal our friendship with silence and presence,
not lectures and menace.

I know you’ve done better than me. I know you can quote faith
higher than me. I know your certainty alone guides you;
but I cannot bear to lie to myself, no matter how that makes
me look when it comes time to pray.

And truth, if you were oppressed, I would never expect you
to get over it. And truth, trauma posts its sadness whether we
invite it or not. Syndromes don’t come asking for permission.

So, I write what I write, and it will burn some day before
or after
my body is gone. They are only digits on a screen,
graphite from a number two yellow pencil

And will last no longer than this season’s dandelions
on the lawn.