I have been put back together.

I am falling apart.

Every piece of me is falling apart.

My skin is flaking off and my bones are turning to dust. My eyes are drying up and my lips have turned to rock. I sit in a small room in my mind. My heart is crumbling and my time grows ever shorter in this place of deterioration.

So little of me is left that when I look in the mirror it is as if I am looking at a stranger. I say words to this person and wave my frail sticklike hands at him but he doesn’t respond. He just tells me to die and leave and run and go and depart from this place.

But now, as I lie here in the filth of this dying body, I am whispered something. This other inside me tells me to stand up. From the wreckage of my skeleton is birthed something to which I am completely unfamiliar. He looks like me but it he is not me. He talks like me but he is not me. He walks and strides and eats and sleeps and kisses like me but he is not me.

But suddenly my eyes begin to fail and my lungs start to crumble and the fullness of my breath fails me and I begin to die. This other then stands over me and looks at me and smiles and touches my paper like eyes lids and shuts them only to have them crumble away into nothingness. My last breath fails for the last time and I am gone.

But then, as if newness and birth were my definition, I am here. My eyes are wet and my bones are taught and stiff and my tongue reels inside my mouth within its saliva. I can feel my legs working and I can feel my hands beginning to grasp and I walk slowly over to the mirror. As I look into it I see me, but not me. I see a version of me that is so different in so many ways. And I love this version of me.

O the work that He has done.

I have been put back together.

I am put back together again.

The Boy in the Trench With the Cold Gun.

It is dark.
Where are my hands?
Where is my brother?
Where is my mother?

There are so few of us.
It scares me.
I am scared.
We are scared.

They are in the trees and bush.
They are quiet.
We are quiet.
We are quiet.

My gun is cold.
My brain is cold.
I can't think.
I don't want to think.

Someone is saying something.
They are yelling.
Why?
Why are they yelling?

We are getting up.
We are up.
We are standing.
I am upon my feet.

Someone yells.
We are running.
I am sprinting.
We are all rushing.

It's very cold.
The moon is out.
I am sweating.
The stars are out.

Metal is in me.
Metal is in me.
Metal is in me.
Metal is in me.

I see my brother.
I see my mother.
I see the moon.
I see the stars.

I'm not cold.

The Woman Who Walked Into the Bookstore.

He could not stop staring. That had to be her. She had to be the one.

In one split second the wholeness of their lives together flashed through his head, around his ears, down his spine and amidst the small spaces between his eyes and brain. He saw their wedding night and the fervent neon intensity that is produced. In his head he could see his love for her being so grand and potent that he would want to crawl inside her skin and rest there forever. He could see her coming home from work and reading to him as he fell asleep and then stroking his hair. Then he would wake in the middle of the night and watch the small piece of skin that rests in the middle of her collarbone and at the base of her throat rise and sink as she took each sleeping breathe. He would do this until the sun rose or until she awoke. Then he would pretend to be asleep so that she would kiss him awake.

Their love would be deep like a sea filled canyon. Together they would try to enjoy the company of other couples but during dinners and gatherings they would just sit and look at each other in boredom knowing that what they had was an impossibility for all of their friends. Then, when they would get home they would rip their clothes off and make love on the living room floor. Then, the next morning, they would go shopping for new clothes looking for shirts with weak buttons and skirts made of thin cloth.

During family holidays, after everyone had eaten or once all of the presents were opened, they would sneak out to the car and be with one another. The goal would be to fog up the glass so as to have that thin barrier of privacy. But they both knew that they would still grope and touch and paw whether it was there or not. Then, straightening his tie and her blouse, they would reenter the house with a surprise and exclaim that they had gone to the store for this one bottle of below par wine.

Every Sunday morning she would cook him breakfast as he dug around in the garden and picked fresh basil for her. Then, once the dishes had been piled high on the counter and left for the flies, he would drive her to the field with the big tree near the rock fence. Once there, he would read her Whitman and Frost and would caress her stomach with a piece of grass. She would look at him and stare into his eyes as if every answer to every question about anything was there, hidden within them.

And this would be the wholeness of who they were. These things and these actions and this love would be what made them one. And it was these things that…

Then she purchased her old cookbook, never once noticing him, and walked out of the store. He stared at her getting into her car and driving away. He took a sip of his coffee.

In a Small Church in West Texas.

She wept so bitterly and with such passion in that first hour that her cheeks became raw from whipping away the tears.

The pews where she sat were wooden and old. They had been smoothed down and polished by all of those who had sat in them from years past. They had been perfected and rounded and worn down by those who had sought to bring some fathomable amount of something to that place. Something that might make that crucified Christ that hung above the alter to detach himself from those crimson stained spikes. To make him hop down off of that cross and sit next to them or to say something to them or to hold a hand. But in everything that they had brought to him he still hung there, head down.

As she slowly gained composure and came back to the reality that she was gone, she stood. Her eye shadow running down her chin and her hair clinging like veins of brown to her cheeks. Her eyes slowly rose to meet those of the Christ. She stared at him. She sized him up. She wanted to throw something at him. But she just turned into the aisle and slowly walked through the center of the church and out of the two heavy wooden doors. Outside the air was thick and warm and was filled with evening sun light. She stood there with the sun beating down on her face and allowed, for just a few brief seconds, for the warm air to rush through and over and about her body; taking the chill of the church away like a feather in the wind.

When she opened her eyes the car with her sister in the drivers seat was sitting in the parking lot. There was a dinner to attend. There were people to talk to. There were streets to drive down and tears to cry. There were bills to pay and friends to call and houses to clean.

So getting into the car with her black veil draped over her face they drove away without a niece and without a daughter. They were one to few. They were missing a piece. They were missing her.

Oh my dearest honey sweet.

Oh my dearest honey sweet.

Most wonderful of flowers in the garden grand where have you gone?

Lilac goddesses in my head, just sitting there, behind my eyes, please come out. Lavender queen with your dress so long I beckon you.

Are you waiting at your tea table? Are you sitting in the house looking at the stars through the cracks in the floor? Are the lilies of the field whispering into your ears the sweet nothings that God has spoken to them? Are you reading the book with the broken spine that tells the sad story?

Rain covered princess here am I.

I am the sad man hidden in the porch wood. I am the farmer whose blood feeds his rows. I am the shingles of this roof. I am the pillar at the base of the stairs.

Where are you my magenta darling for whom I so dearly long? Have you hidden yourself away in the map of my heart? Are you caught in the thicket that nears itself to your worry? Have you been pricked by the thistles of loneliness?

I have cleaned my ax for you. It is newly sharpened. My steps hasten under me without a single thought.

This is no time for picnic baskets or homes made of gingerbread. No more men made of tin or breadcrumb trails. The era of little red capes and pales of water has come to its end.

So, little girl in the garden so grand, with hair a mess and head cloud bound, let yourself spin.

Spin you princess of the ages. Spin well and spin long.

That wind is my voice.

“I love you. I love you. I love you.”