I ask God to make me whole,
and a plethora of doubts display;
“I simply desire truth,” I say,
and my being is slowly unmade.
Unraveled into strips and pieces —
bits and bobs of who I am,
strewn about on the table,
fear ripping open my diaphragm.
“But, I didn’t want this today,
all the dramatics and deep questions.
I only wanted to know if you see me,
and if I’m really going to be okay.
What even is sin,
Why this way? Why this method?
And how is it all my fault
that I’ve been created this haunted?
Whether by my own volition
or others’ choices rendered upon me,
I’m a product of many elements, both people, passions, and culture;
how are punishments and threats meant to set me free?”
I stare and point at the mosaic laid bare,
begging to be something different:
someone simpler, better suited to follow directions, and
maybe slightly less ambivalent.
Too often too many words burn in my mind and throat,
my opinions and dreams shifting like the tide,
My mind changes over and over,
wouldn’t it be easier if it all, and myself, were just denied?
Love pieces the tiles together
using a glue of bright light,
illuminating my gifts and flaws,
my humanness in plain sight.
“Don’t hurt me!” I wail, wanting to rip the shards away,
“I’m too much, there’s too many pieces,
just burn some of them, burn all of them,
this life bruises too deeply for me to remain me, to remain this way.
I don’t want to disappear, to become ashes.
But it would be easier, to be less.
Much less.”
“You tortured writer, you,” Love says with a sigh,
engulfing me in the mosaic quilt of my life.
“Art is not flawless, it’s truth. It’s real.
You are art and were made to create,
to ask the hard questions and to think.
Embody love, keep stepping forth in courage.
Uncertainty isn’t your enemy. Denial and hiding are.”
Being palatable and perfect isn’t the goal, I’ve come to realize;
Acceptance, humility, welcoming, being free with apologies,
looking and living like Love and sharing what I find along the way.
Allowing myself to be me, a “tortured writer,” the thorn in my flesh, pained soliloquies.
