I’ve been practicing
gratitude.
I’ve been skipping entire
weeks.
Practicing a wider lens.
Listening
for the bully’s heartbeat
Hearing it in my own chest.
I’ve been remembering the
time I cried
in a cloud of tear gas at a
peaceful protest.
How I decided I was too soft
to last,
and then I decided to be
softer.
I’ve been remembering way way
back
to the moment they told me
Jesus walked on water.
How I knew whatever I’d grow
up to believe
I would never try to wrestle
a miracle
away from anyone’s reason to
live.
I’ve been remembering how I
wrestled a miracle
away from your reason to
live.
If only shame could wash me
clean,
but that is never how healing
works.
Nobody ever won anything from
anyone
thinking the whole world was
out of their league.
I’m sorry you know
what I look like when no one
is looking.
I don’t expect anyone to
believe
in justice and forgiveness at
the same time.
If it’s any consolation
I feel like a ferris wheel in
a snowbank
twenty years after they shut
down the park.
If it’s any consolation I’ve
been living in my head
whenever anyone tells me I
have a good heart.
And I think about you. I
think about you.