Crownweight

I wake,
not to trumpets,
but to the dull insistence of unfinished purpose.
Morning’s forbearance is not warm-
it’s surgical.

The mirror won’t meet my gaze anymore.
I tried once
to weave its glass into a tapestry.
But blood does not hold threads,
and every stitch
was a memory that cut me.

There are suppurating corners in my mind,
where old sins slouch, unrepentant,
too familiar to kill,
too loud to sanctify.
I crave what is right
the way addicts crave flame
or is it
that I lust for it?
And long, instead,
for pleasure
to sanctify itself?

The Bible waits
like a widow in black
faithful,
ignored.
I sip my coffee,
numb and unaccompanied,
knowing He watches me
not with rage,
but with remembrance.

He gave me a body
destined for dual use
fertilizer for disease
and fertilizer for strength.
A made-to-hold, built to rot
or to resurrect.
And sometimes
both.

It’s not that I don’t notice
the girl with black eyes,
with lips like ripe cherries,
the smell of death
leaking from her throat
sweet and bitter, subtle,
but unmistakable.
It is that I only have
so many heartbeats,
and they belong to others.

I am not Job.
I do not ask well.
I stare at the heavens
with a jaw full of cracked teeth
and let the silence press
until my skull feels thin.
Kavod is not bestowed,
it is driven inward
like a nail.
He does not crown me gently
He grinds it down
until metal meets pith
and my knees become theology.

Some days He hands me laughter.
Some days, sand.
I have learned to swallow both
without complaint,
though never without quivering.
I carry joy like a charge set to blow,
hidden and waiting to destroy despair.
It has sharp edges
and sings when I hemorrhage.

My prayers are not answered.
They are sown
in unmarked graves.
They rise only
after forgetting
who planted them.

The road is gravel in my joints.
But forward
is the only verb
I still believe.

There is a city
Not imagined,
but inherited.
It haunts me
in reverse.
It is descending
like judgment wrapped in forbearance,
slow as forgiveness
and just as bright.
And I,
silt-stitched, rust-fed,
will stand again
not proud,
but whole.

He will press His palm
against the ruptures He once required,
and they will vanish,
not like lies,
but like debts paid
in full
with blood I didn’t earn.
Then I will lift the crown
from where it has broken me,
and cast it – not away,
but homeward.
For faith is obsolete
where sight reigns,
and it heft 
is temporary.

And I,
who once hemorrhaged for belief,
will laugh.
Weightless.
Undefended.
Finally seeing. 
Love will remain.
Love
will never
burn.