5:53 a.m. - 2005-07-12
Redemption Rant
And there I stood, in the parking lot, suddenly holy ground. Watched over from above. The light in the window flickered out. God caught in the act. Weaving my way back to the gate, I sensed the land mines everywhere. Earned forgiveness for ambiguous transgressions. Life as pennance. Aloof benificence just out of reach. Ever courting his favor. Ever courting His favor. The original betrayal daily re-enacted. First position. Second. Forcing my baby limbs into impossible gestures of hope. Innocense frozen into a caricature of pleading. Grace nowhere to be found. Baby eyes continually scanning the dry internal landscape for anything moving. Quenching desires before they dare arise. Petitioning the moon. Perpetual bud refusing to bloom myself out of existence. Staying small as mantra. Strategy for peace. Petals drained of color closing in upon themselves like a cautious hug. Votive after votive and still no relief. I mistake him for sky, while He eludes me. Hide and seek among the clouds. Recoiling from the holy water lest I burn. A baby grieving for she knows not what. Forgive me. Forgive me. For I know not what I do. What I did. Who I am. Who you are. Who You are. A baby preoccupied by aged knots. Quicksand ankle deep. Mired in fear. Fear of offending. The Holy Grail, a child's sip cup. Please. Please. See me. Don't see me. Shame like a blanket pulled tight against the winds of change. Maybe, just maybe, he is not God after all. Maybe I am suspended in space by Another less fierce. Maybe my broken heart is affirmed in the dark, unbeknownst to me. Maybe I am not alone there in the parking lot, there in the shadows. Maybe the speck that is me is carefully tended just beyond my gaze. Just beyond that window I called heaven. Maybe I do not have to move along like a leaf in the pull mistaken for fate. Maybe he is not my source, not mother or father or even God. Maybe he is just he. A fun house mirror. Sorting his own waves and buckles. Up there behind the glass. No wizard. Just a scared boy with crooked teeth. I wait in the dark. Ambivalent. The sound of two babies crying in the lonely, lonely night. The easy path that leads back to him. Up the stairs and into the safe haven of danger. The path less traveled, the one that would make all the difference, is no doubt less enticing. Weighed down by ghosts, I climb. The green pool light turns ropes to snakes. Trees to childhood ghouls. Bless me, father. Bless me, Father. The ogre under the stairs leers, reaching a bony hand that just misses my tanned leg. I climb. Past the screen that smells of stale smoke. Past the inferno that knows me by name. On down the hall, clutching the wrought iron railing for dearest glimpse of life. Tunnel dream. Near life experience. I walk. Forward, this time. Fumbling with the golden key, I open the door that was really not that heavy.
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