There’s a doctrine carved into stone within me.
It says: You aren’t acceptable.
In front of the Bible every morning,
I beg the Lord for niceness.
For a tongue that drips with honey.
Instead, there’s a bitterness in my mouth.
And I am weary of the world.
With crowds and traffic,
generational scrolls that never change.
Dusty with stagnation.
And myself -she never changes.
My anger is hurricane wind.
Snapping oaks like twigs.
I am clutching that stone tablet of rules.
Cold, hard, brittle.
Tugging at me are dark pious voices
Who accuse me day and night.
Yearning to place me in a corner,
Silence me in the name of niceness.
I can’t go back there.
To that barren land of nothingness.
Somewhere around here is the match.
I’ve exhausted all the dutiful practices, anyway.
A truth ignites from a small flame.
You do not have to be polite and smile.
Love and light and Immanuel are here.
They aren’t just things collecting dust for the righteous.
While you burn and smolder, They sit with you.
They look into your eyes and hold your face.
They take your flame and burn too.
My skin, my bones, my curves, and ever-furrowed brow.
The washing of the counters, the laundry, the diaper trash.
The Everlasting Light sees.
With a rugged, sweaty face as well.
His voice a sword
Glinting and glittering with truth.
You are salt. You are light.
You are the flavorer, the soother, the upholder.
I entrusted these things to you.
Blessed are you.
My flames of anger,
They reach the heights now.
He calls them good,
Calls out the tenderness,
The wails of grief,
The yearning for peace that is behind it all.
He stretches out his wing:
You are never too much.
You are loved like the number of grains of sand,
the stars in the sky.
