(don't have a title for this right now)

you recover.

you breathe, stretch.
you somehow stand up.
you find the muscles for a smile again.
you laugh a little too loudly and hug a little too long.
you keep breathing.
you have some tea.
you do a few chores.
you downward dog.
you dance a little.
you realize the pain wasn’t enough to kill you so
you keep going.
you know it won’t be the last time but
you let the thought pass.
you look forward to tomorrow.

you recover.

vertical aesthetic

i just sent an email
to a friend
in the form of a poem--

stanzas,

line
breaks,
the whole 9
minus rhymes
(oh wait)

not sure why

faith encounters

today in church, i was feeling detached.  we kept talking about experiencing God, asking ourselves when we last felt the presence of God…and i just felt like i was there but not there.  like i’ve been going through motions.  i kept trying to let that feeling go, to focus, but it wouldn’t leave.

until the last few minutes of service.

i loved doing jigsaw puzzles when i was little—if i had time, i’d still do them on occasion.   i used to work on them over the span of days; i would sit at the table in our family room upstairs and put together 100, 500, 1000+ piece puzzles, losing track of time, sometimes putting them together systematically—starting at the edges of the picture and working my way in—and sometimes fitting things together with no real rhyme or reason.

back when i was applying to colleges, my pastor preached a sermon entitled “Let God Put the Pieces Together.”  he gave everyone a puzzle pieces as a reminder of his point.  i made a necklace out of it and wore it to multiple pre-frosh weekends.  it was a tangible indicator of who was in control as i tried to figure out where i’d be attending school after graduation.  i think i still have it somewhere.

at the end of church today, as i was praying that i would let go and let God work out these feelings of detachment, He gave me a brief glimpse of Him, sitting at a table, fitting jigsaw pieces together…slowly, carefully.  He showed me that He is fitting me together, even when i don’t feel Him doing so, even if it seems to take Him days or weeks to finish it.  i can’t put myself together; only He can do that.  i want to rest in that image, because it’s been with me for a while, whether i was aware of it or not.

common knowledge

"Everyone knows,"
we say,
"that putting
Band-aids on bullet
wounds will never
stop the bleeding."

and yet
we let those
crimson rivers
flow

and
we wrap
our secrets in
gauze

and
we walk like
we've never been
damaged

Kaleidoscope, Ch. 9

**Author's Note: As promised, whenever I get a chance to come back to this project and finish a chapter of Kaleidoscope, I'll post it on this blog.  Just keep in mind that I'm not trying for award-winning writing; I'm simply trying to finish the project for its own sake (do tell me what you think of it, though).  In the words of James Thurber (which I often reference when I'm writing a paper), "Don't get it right, just get it written."**

Serenity sat slumped over at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, blankly regarding her half-eaten bowl of cereal.  Botan was busy ferrying souls to Spirit World, and Amake hadn’t made an appearance yet, even though it was almost noon.  The morning had taken quite a bit out of all of them.

            Serenity fingered the necklace Ratoshi had given her, then the locket with her mother’s picture, which she had put on before going to bed the night before.  Struggling to put the morning into some sort of perspective, she recalled what Kurama had said about her newly discovered ability to teleport.  Following his logic, Serenity thought she might be able to add electricity to the growing list of anomalies.   She was beginning to doubt that merely “interacting with the Spirit World” could cause such a dynamic manifestation of power.

            “Your cereal’s getting soggy, you know,” said a voice to her right.  She turned to see Amake sitting on the stool next to her, reaching for jelly to put on a piece of toast.  The hair on his head was sticking out in various places, and he was shirtless.  Serenity couldn't help but glance briefly at his body before meeting his gaze.  Amake didn’t seem to notice.

            “Hey there, sleepyhead,” she said in greeting.  “I didn’t notice you come in.”

            Amake tried to suppress a yawn while he spoke.  “I just rolled off the couch a couple of minutes ago, actually.”

            Serenity nodded and poked at her cereal, spooning it into her mouth slowly.  The two friends sat in silence for a minute.  Then, she thought of something to ask.

            “Hey, Amake…right before the lightning stopped this morning and you and Botan came in…what happened?”

            He took a bite of toast before answering.  “Well, what do you remember?”

            Serenity pondered the question for some time before she replied.  “There were flashes of a nightmare I’d had…there was the lightning…but then I felt something inside my head.  I don’t know how to describe it exactly; it was only a voice, but it was also more than just a voice.  It kept whispering my name over and over, and I started to feel, I don’t know…at peace.  Then the lightning stopped and the nightmare didn’t haunt me anymore.  That’s when you and Botan came in.”  She finished her account and glanced up at Amake.  She noticed that he was smiling; her eyes turned brown with curiosity.

            Amake balled up the napkin that his toast had been resting on before he’d finished it.  Then he got up and walked over to the trashcan, threw the paper ball away, sat back down, and turned the stool so that his whole body faced Serenity.  The enigmatic smile had not left his face.  Serenity’s brow furrowed as she waited for an explanation. 

Amake remained silent for another couple of seconds before Serenity spoke again.  “Well?  What are you smiling about?”  Suddenly, Amake placed a hand on her shoulder and leaned closer to her, his eyes never leaving hers.

Amake moved his head to his right, Serenity’s left, once his face was no more than an inch from hers.  He stopped when his lips were at her ear; Serenity could feel his warm breath on her skin as he began to whisper to her.

The spoon she was still holding fell from her hands with a loud clatter as she pushed back from the breakfast bar and away from Amake’s hand.

“THAT VOICE WAS YOU?  YOU WENT INSIDE MY HEAD?” she exclaimed, her eyes turning red and gray.

Amake looked down and brushed stray crumbs from his pants before speaking again.  “Wasn’t expecting you to get so upset—”

“Upset!?  You invade my mind without my knowledge and expect me not to get angry!?  What kind of sense…” Serenity paused and lowered her voice.  “How?” she growled flatly.

“Well,” Amake replied, “it’s one of the many talents that Kaze and I realized we had, some months after your disappearance.  We can levitate, read minds, bend spoons, stop objects in mid-air—the list goes on.”  For emphasis, Amake lifted Serenity’s fallen eating utensil and placed it back in her cereal bowl without ever touching either object.  “Of course, my brother can do some of those things better than I can, and vice versa, but you get the idea.”

By this time, the rage had left Serenity’s eyes, replaced by timidity.  “Hey, Amake, I’m…really sorry for losing you guys.  I know ‘sorry’ doesn’t fix the fact that a lot has happened since the last time we were all together…”

Amake placed a reassuring hand on Serenity’s shoulder, causing her to fall silent.  “I suppose,” he said through a smile, “that we’ll simply have to make up for lost time.”