Why We Edit

Nothing is written in concrete except the commandments and even then, interpretation makes even the heaviest hand write in the unspoken dust of chalk.

It seems that words change much like their owners, bending and twisting into shapes nothing like their former selves. Is it not the duty of the artist to notice and apply change? To go back and edit, to add light in the darkest of spaces and breath in the most suffocating of chests?  

Though we lack the power to change already lived days and the divinity that it takes to resuscitate dead moons and cold tides, words never become stiff. The veins of words never stop the moving blood and the heartbeat never becomes so intermittent that it can never pulse again. 

It is the gift of the creative mind to keep creating, to keep editing the art to allow it measure in someone's life. What we have created yesterday may not apply to the child born tomorrow and our talent does not lie in pleasing the past but rather in accommodating the future. Who are we if we stay the same? Who can they be if we do not show them their power to change?

Though editing is tedious and feels somewhat like cheating, who are we as artists if we do not demand the art to evolve like its subjects?  It is because their evolution is so precious and so beautiful, that it must be memorialized each time  by the blank space where artists live. Change in humans is inevitable but it is truly divine to take note of such.

Edit, if not for yourself, for the people who are in constant vigor of having been edited. 

Sabotage

Sabotage I love you

And I pray for the dismantling of our deepest sorrows

Looking for a God whose faith is so great, He leaves his precious pieces unfinished

I dust the carvings of men once loved from the caves of my spine 

And I recognize that my love for you is exclusive 

Refusing to be penetrated by the demanding beauty of a perpetual challenge

If you could only love me in short sentences and second grade valentines

Your smile weighs on me like thunder storms, clapping the sides of my soul into cadences of curry

Spicy, feisty and feels so good going down 

But when the rain subsides and the house grows quiet, the pepper seeds of angry words & heated moments become vines that we can no longer stand on

And we will then find ourselves in the abyss of having been in love and guilty of suffocating it before it suffocated us

Sabotage...a beautiful and conniving love maker slicing sheets and pink flesh only to wake up as infidelity instead. 

Where God lives

Maybe I haven't told y'all that I've been searching for God everywhere.  I've looked in empty soap dishes, between the lint of my tightest pants, in the dark corners of my closet that are still living in 1997.  I've looked damn near everywhere and it seems to me that the only time I feel at peace, like He's looking directly at me is when I look up in the sky and see images like this.  
I've watched the sky burn oil to the canvas of clouds and I've seen the clouds dance around one another like gypsies roaming unclaimed land.  I've seen darkness in shades Crayola forgot to mention like grace, poise, tragedy and faith.  And while we're talking about faith, I've jumped deep into mine like the first time I learned to swim in Nevis waters.  Jumped into it and felt the water slap and soothe my face simultaneously.  The water, much like my faith felt good enough to drown in, but yet and still compelled me to swim to the top.  
It is a crazy thing to feel duality in one body, well it may not be crazy, but it feels that way. And while I'm trying to find a balance between feeling empty spiritually and full of thoughts mentally, I guess a part of balance is understanding that sometimes it will escape you.
I haven't figured out all the kinks yet and I don't know if God is going to pencil me in this week, but I've learned this:  I'm not brilliant at all, I'm just extraordinarily human and somewhere in all of that, there is divinity…which is to say that maybe I have to stop searching for God and understand that He never left.

Little girls crying

My daughter was crying over something trivial that she would probably forget in a few minutes; not because she's a forgetful person but rather because it really wouldn't matter.  So I sat her down and said, "Listen to me, don't cry over anything we can get back.  If you lose your notebook or your lunch box, we can buy those back.  Look around your room, everything in here, we can buy again.  Don't cry over things we can replace.  Save your tears for the things that can never be replaced.  You hear me?  Save your tears."


That was probably too deep for a six year old.  But besides giving birth to her, that was the only other moment where I felt I was truly destined to be a mother.  She has no idea yet, but she will need those tears and I will be right beside her when they fall.

I didn't see your wings

Him (not to be confused with #HIM): Do you still pray?
Me: The only thing I've been able to muster up is "Where is God"
Him: I'll finish it for you.  The things you need have a way of finding you.


I see why God needs so many angels; because he sends so many back here on Earth.

Where are you God?

Hi God.


I don't know if you come here often or at all but I feel closest to you right here so I figured here would be the best place to start.  Jesus taught his disciples to pray much like my grandmother taught me.  I learned to pray at the banks of her feet, weeping joy that I was never starving, never cold and never without the bare necessities.  It was at the foot of my grandmother's bed that I learned to be a disciple of Christ instead of a nuisance. But now I come to you willing trade all my gifts, fortunes and blessings for even just a chance to ask a question.  You know I've always struggled with knowing what I want when I've had so much of what I needed but today is a day unlike any other.  Today I come to you as a far cry from the little girl on the edge of her grandmother's bed with her hands clasped and her eyes squeezed shut.  


I have arrived at the foot of your son's cross unaware of the spectacle before me, hinged by my own tangled fray.  I have my hands open waiting for an extra blessing to fall off of your high table somewhere in the clouds.  I'm waiting at your white gates with a notepad to plead my case, not one moment above knocking Peter out of the way to get to you.  I come to you with the bleeding wings of angels that have sacrificed their spot in heaven for me.  It is at this very moment, I need you.  I am begging you to take me instead, to let me take his place.  In my bag, I have all the offerings to convince you my plan will work.  I have a flushed liver, cherry red intestines and a bladder that works more than I need it to.  I need none of those things and for all you've given me, for all he's done for me, I will gladly hand them over.


How much do you need? Do you need my ability to write too?  I will scribe the names of Katrina's victims, of every slave to get lost in the Middle passage, the name of every Chinese citizen in the Nanking horror and the names of all 9/11 victims if you will just hear what I have to say.  I wondered for a long time how you could watch your son get betrayed and slaughtered.  Higher purpose or not, as a parent, no purpose seems greater than our instinctual habit to protect.  But I figured, you must know what you're doing.  So tell me, please explain to me, what you're doing here.  What purpose does this aching serve?  What sacrifice is so great that it must deny the sacrifices already made?  Tell me why this week I have come to understand that as a parent, we spend our lives preparing our children to live without us but as a child, when that day comes, we can never be prepared.


I'm asking with a heavy heart if you've noticed that his cross is not his alone to bear.  Don't you see us stuck beside him hanging by the nails of an unknown force bleeding from the flesh between our ribs, crying from the heart underneath?  Don't you see us there tired from the walk to Calvary, feeling betrayed by the people who were supposed to love us most, feeling like someone let the devil in?  I just want to know God, if I am to ever ask you for anything, can it be this?  Can I lay beside you so you can see that I cannot sleep?  Can I sit at your dinner table so that you can see that I cannot eat?  Can you kneel beside me at the foot of my grandmother's bed and pray with me?  Who do you turn to when there's nowhere to turn?  Please tell me, please answer me this once.


If you can take us out of this hell, I promise I won't need heaven.  And for the life of me, I can't understand why you need so many angels.   Don't you see the war is here on Earth?  Just don't leave me behind.  Don't leave me at the foot of this bed, don't leave me at the foot of this cross. Don't leave me here in this conversation with my hands clasped so tightly that the sun's rays couldn't even peek through the cracks.


I want to pray on his behalf.  I want you to forgive him for me and I want you to let him fight.  I want you to walk the devil out.  And I want you to forgive me in advance for being angry with you, for wondering where exactly you are, for wondering if Heaven is secretly behind the walls I've been banging on.  You said that the kingdom of heaven will be ours, that "the days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength, labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off and we fly away."   I just want the time you promised us.  


Forgive me.  Heavenly father, as I come to you with with questions, I am seeking comfort.  I am here offering myself and other secular fancies in an exchange for your divine intervention. Lord, I trust you but the devil found his way here and I need you to let me borrow some strength to fight this battle.  I know you wouldn't give me anything more than I can bear but I think there's been some miscommunication on what I can handle.  I'm tired and you know this.  You know that my heart is heavy with worry and I ask that you heal those cracks for me.  I'm asking that you lay your hands on mine, that you touch me with your protection Lord. I'm asking that you rest your sword on the back of my neck and remind the devil that you will never leave my side.  God, I'm asking you to hold my family in your hands this week.  We're finally all in the same place coming from years of being lost and I ask that you forgive us for that.  I ask that you save us some of your glory and that you find the time to send some peace our way.  Hold us in the palm of your hands Lord and keep us safe.  In your holy name, we pray. Amen.


Sincerely, 
Your daughter.  But his daughter too.

What We Could Have Been...

I remember him in flashes like speckled pieces of gold on the bedroom floor of angels.  I had only known him for some moments and yet that transpired into lifetimes, kissing his lips into eternity and finding hugs that could only be described as everlasting.  There was something about his spirit that moved me, that tickled the soles of my feet, that arched the spine in my back, that made dimples in cheeks that were obviously full of nothing but depth.  


Unbeknownst to me then, we were soul mates or mating souls that decided even if we weren't meant to be, we would be.  Without ever needing justification from the nine planets of the world or reasoning from its great science, we loved not because Michelangelo was a painter or because Galileo was a damn good mathematician - we loved because that was what we intended to do.  Maybe we were born to be greater things than lovers.  Maybe he was supposed to cure cancer and maybe I was supposed to save four little Black girls from a church bombing but we were none of those things and we were not made whole or broken because of it.  We wanted nothing more than to be lovers, uniquely bound by the breath and taste of the other.


Maybe we were supposed to have a big wedding and celebrate Valentine's Day like it was the anniversary of our first kiss but we loved in our way.  We loved on random Tuesdays throughout the year and made love like it was our honeymoon when sometimes it was just quiet Saturday afternoons that seemed to be longing for an interruption of sweet moans and glistening sweat.  I don't know what we were supposed to be but I have long realized what we came to be.


Two fragile beings made strong by the decision to lean against one another, breasts to chest, with my face nestled into his deep collarbone and his hands resting on the bench of my hips.  Being lovers was sufficient and even beyond whatever plans we could have fulfilled.  I never looked at him a day in my life and wished to be anything other than his lover.  I never looked at my hands with his, interlocked amongst my slim fingers and felt like I should have been carrying anything or anyone else.  I never looked at my body like it belonged to me once I gave it to him.  Being his lover had become more than enough.  It had become like breathing and I sustained in that love, grew from it and buried myself in it.  I could have saved the world if only I had time to notice that it needed saving.  You see, when I looked into his eyes, I could only see us and for me, that world never needed to be saved because it was always busy enough saving me.