Monsters and Men

I covered me with you.

I hid in your bright places

            your funny spaces

            your anxiety cubicles

            your opinion pools.

I ran with you

   yet I was paused inside.

I didn’t churn

   nor speak, nor shift

      nor keep my insides fully in.

They seeped, they crept,

            they pushed themselves in

a corner in the hollow of my heart.

I trashed the treasure inside

  for pauper parts.

And though I was poor

   I sprinkled what food I had on the floor.

And the me that was me

            was now a monster, so it seemed.

I am not a monster,

            I whispered, but your fears and mine

   slipped like ghostly fingers into

                        our ears

and shouted otherwise.

And I was left

knees boring into the hard cold floor of truth.

At least truth was what it seemed.

And the monster dragged me

  like the dead and showed me off

as dark victory would have it.

I am not covered.

But you are.

And I was naked.

And you were clothed.

And I was hungry.

And you were satisfied.

And my eyes stung with

    sadness, with hatred

  with the smell of rotten flesh

  where my heels had burned

from my monster dragging me.

I had not love.

And I stared into the Son

            and I could not see love.

I said, Leave me. Leave me here to die. For

            my insides to cease, for my soul to

               decrease.

I pushed the seeds into the ground

            believing that they could not grow.

  Yet someone came and watered them

And the sprout spurt pain across the dirt

         to make its stand in the world

   that could swallow it whole.

  But it did not swallow

  but the world wallowed at

        a plant that dared face the vastness

     of earth.

  And the seeds were me, truly.

And I could not water except with

       salted drips from my weeping eyes.

But the purest of pure water

flowed over me like, crisp, clean breath

And said, Live.

     And I Lived. Sometimes I

scratch at the dirt.

Sometimes I stay low for fear

    that anxious men and crippling monsters

will rip me out.

But He said, See me here.

   And this time I looked into

          the Son and I saw

      Love.

I reached for the nail.

It looked painful.

   And he curled his fingers over

      mine and He said, No.

    That nail, that monster, is mine.

   And he said, Look down at your

        hands,

            And I looked.

It was the cross engraven on my palms.

   He said, Put your hands before you,

And I did.

  And Love stood before me.

     And the fearful men,

     The monster, driven into me,

fell

like rain out of the clouds. 



-Anna