My Invisible Skin

 My Invisible Skin

(“I’ve said these things to you so that you will have peace in me. In the world you have distress. But be encouraged! I have conquered the world.” John 16:33)

It isn’t guilt these days,
it’s the suffering, the sheer pain of squeezing
the most moments from each slant of the sun.
Do I miss friends who no longer understand?

I once had a plastic model, a man with invisible skin.
Inside were the organs: stomach and liver and arteries and veins.
I never learned much from him, or from the frogs I dissected in school.
All their insides blended in dirty wash-water grey.
It is fortunate I am not a physician.

At any rate I wish there was a picture window
to my soul
and it could be viewed dispassionately,
entirely undressed.
I would no longer need to rehearse my
answers, no longer hide what gathered dust
in the rafters. And I would be happy to sit still
for every x-ray snapshot.

Scolding never healed a headache,
surprise inspections alter few behaviors.
If you could see through my plastic skin
would you dissect my present from my past?
Would you think my last iteration was more
tattered than the first?

In the end it matters little,
though surgeons have whittled away at
a few of my organs.
My within remains intact,
my invisible skin only covers
a mosaic whose colors sometimes change
but whose essence has remained the same.

These Invisible Threads

 

These Invisible Threads

(“For the Lord your God is a compassionate God; He will not abandon you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant with your fathers which He swore to them.” Deuteronomy 4:31)

I hide it; it has been damaged so long.
I lock the doors; I have been lonely so long.
I used to read the junk mail because it
was addressed to me. And if a personal letter
arrived face down under the furniture flyer and
the weekly shopper,
I would open it anxiously. Written words had
pierced me and left me bleeding before.
Now that the wounds are old(er) they surprise me
when saltwater inflames them like the first day
(when was that day? did the sun shine? did someone find
me tripping over my words? did someone hear me unguarded?
did my sin become fodder for the grinding wheel? when was
that day? and how many others? or months. or years.)

Or was I scooped up before my head hit the pavement,
was I engulfed in flaming love,
was my ruin the conditions for a new world coming,
was my injury the bed where fire and life collided
to reconvene uneventful joy and the beginning of
a friendly walk down the Emmaus road?

Lately I still cry and so do some of my babies.
Lately I still will the clouds away filled with maybes.
Lately I still read words harsher than I wished and (dance
steps) they do not slice me.
Lately I’ve written letters in my head to every one
I hid from, every one who hid from me, for precisely
these invisible threads, gossamer and strong,
that should never have been severed
at all.

Daylight Comes Shining

Daylight Comes Shining

(“Jesus turned on Peter and said, ‘Get away from me, you Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are thinking merely from a human point of view, and not from God’s.’” Matthew 16:23)

It is true; my posture often discloses the poses
I take to motivate you to see what I so guardedly hide
inside.
I hope to be clearer come the morning,
with new sun shining through invisibility, not glass.
I desire the fresh air bathing tomorrow, not past.
I tip my hat to the next step I take with better vision,
the next portrait unmistakably unretouched, no airbrush,
only bad haircuts, crooked ties, unbuttoned sleeves, and
colored t’s with bob dylan or the cookie monster postered
up front.

Teach me to dance, easier, Jesus. You alone leave me unlonely;
Your love only has cured my unlovely. I never did like any photo
(black and white and waited for development, or digital and tossed
in digital packets across the wifi world), except for one: I was caught
by surprise,
my granddaughter in my arms, her face full of chocolate and my eyes,
full of messy joy.

When Your suffering is over, Lover of my soul, teach me fully,
(I fear the request) what it means to suffer and die with you,
too. Perhaps I will not cringe the unhinged photos that make me believe
all can see
each impurity and the next unearned wrinkle.

You are all the whole, and I am the cog with broken teeth
I always wished had been straightened. You are the only,
I should know your Daylight comes shining and my heart
leaps like summer’s first day after the best sleep of the year.