BREATH MY ONLY BOUNDARY

HI Y’ALL! I appreciate all your sweet messages and thanks for checking on me. In answer to the two questions I get asked most: YES I am still writing and YES I am still in seminary. In fact, I have been writing up a storm and am set to graduate in May. And in addition to all the fun academic papers I have been churning out, I have also been having the time of my life writing songs and poetry. I look forward to sharing those with you here as soon as possible. (Fun fact: publishers don’t like us to share our work through our channels until they have gotten to do so via theirs. I appreciate your patience as I try to exercise some of my own here.)

In the meantime, you can stay connected to me on Instagram (where I post mildly-inappropriate memes and wildly-geeky theology,) and/or read this piece, recently published by Fathom Magazine.

click graphic to hear me read this poem

BREATH MY ONLY BOUNDARY

A mute and silent prisoner bound

beneath ebony ocean depths

dull obsidian within me

Lips, shackled. Tongue, tethered.

Cheeks, shame-faced and waxen

from lack of light, want of redemption

There is no song here.

I bite my lip, seeking some sensation

Savor the copper tang of deprivation

Pennies on my tongue, bitter

Marbles in my mouth, muffled

Anvil on my ankles, leaden

Trauma tangled in my hair

Hope mangled by my fear

Can holiness reach even here?

He says yes.

The sky brightly beckons

Would I dare rise?

I yearn toward yellow but my fear fetters

The wicked waves thrust me deeper

send me tumbling

Yet I clamor, kick, climb

for truth is not a tether.

Fear-soaked and vice-choked

I break the surface

I confess the bitter briny sea

the brackish wild depravity

and gulp—honey-sweet—his mercy

Breath now my only boundary.

The sun sways daffodil above me

showers silken warmth upon me

sparks worship deep within me

THIS is glory.

My lungs and heart are full to bursting

My mouth, once desert, no longer thirsting

My first song is surrender

I am free.

*the phrase “Breath my only boundary” was inspired by “Breath as a Boundary,” the title of a portrait by Kenturah Davis.