Love So Slow

Love So Slow

(“Christ himself was like God in everything. He was equal with God. But he did not think that being equal with God was something to be held on to.” Philippians 2:6)

You’re not my type (my mind knifes as I fall asleep)
You’re not enough (my past strikes as I awaken)
The slightest silence and I am gone on another hike
around the edges of sanity. I would not have fashioned
my brain this way.

My mind is on constant rewind
back to the entitled days. The hidden greys
that belonged to men with unbridled consciences,
with untamed storms that leaked out every pore.
I shivered at the worst, ignored most at first,
and hoped my fears would never happen. I
wished away summer days with my feet in the streams.

Proving the curse a mistake was the dream
of my bedtime stories. Fantasies of
magic wands to clear my head of all the wrongs
I committed and all the damage I inflicted
and all the pain from songs I wish I had written.

Worse yet I fancied the light, rose in the ranks,
laid my hands on the sick, spoke like a prophet,
and wasted my best on hiding the rest which
dwelt in darkness too deep to define.

(Crying after midnight, sobbing insomnia,
and prayers that only groaned without relief.)

I would have beat myself into submission to
gain admission into the holiest place.

But well down the road I read the words again,
the sigh and gasps of embrace. Sand beaches,
baby children, dogs with ironic names became
the hymns I misheard from the beginning. And

You were my type after all (my soul kites and
my heart steeps in the love so slow it clings
to everything)