Another Piece of Cake

Another Piece of Cake

(“Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you should answer everyone.” Colossians 5:6)

Once the table is set and the soup is poured
we talk between sips of warmth and hope.
We haven’t talked this way since they siphoned off
the last bit of joy that once ran like honey.
Between sustenance and governance we stubbornly
held our ground even while our ground was sinking.
Now, with no more arguments left, we sit nervously,
almost bereft,
and our emptiness opens us to rounder words that
fit our hearts more evenly. Food makes us family,
the first course was served before we knew each other
at all.
And now,
perhaps the last course,
can be shared with no expectations at all. There is
always another chair at the table.

The next day we just might
sit outside. I watched, looking down my gravel driveway,
to see if you liked my invitation.
I peered through the knothole, the question mark
in the middle of my fence,
to see if, after our Monday evening repast,
we could paint a backyard portrait on Tuesday,
carried across the street on the
grill smoke from a half dozen neighbors.
There is always room for you on the patio.
There is always another piece of cake.

Like a Teapot Whistling

Like a Teapot Whistling

(“Therefore let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn’t fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:12)

I’ve watched you hold it all in,
every word that pierced you and left you
looking for a corner to hide in.
I’ve watched you carry decades of
winter you your soul.
How could there be a warmer heart than yours,
how could the days treat you so icily?
And I know
you’ve waited for the gravelly statue to
crumble,
the one that loomed over it all.
Weekends are the worst, aren’t they,
the days of rest and celebration
are full of after-shocks and night terrors.
Someone should hold a mirror up to the
stone fists that demand complete oblation.

They are feet of clay,
yours are perfectly human.
They are words meant to break everything,
yours are measured like poetry, like morse code,
like parables with multiple endings. You are sending
distress calls hidden between the layers of a cake.

What to do until the tormentors fall?
What to say, feel, cry, or think of it all?
There are rivers the tyrants dam to keep the
power all to themselves.
There are memories that they recreate
to shape their slurs into acceptable words.
And when they slice away your living hope
they blame you for the wounds.
What to do until someone turns on the lights again?

I’ve watched you let it out
little by little
like a teapot whistling.
I’ve watched you shed the tears that
no one ever sees.