That Small Space
Longing is a fancy word for decimation.
A mirror I run from when I should be facing it.
I know truth, and truth knows me
I pray to the Lord, mold me.
Faith tangled between fantasy and heaven’s decree.
I beg the hope I long for, don’t control me.
They say actions are louder than words
but what do you do when actions scream love,
while silence strangles the sound?
Hexed by a fearful spell, cast by Tinker Bell.
Flip a coin into a wishing well.
Hope clings to my chest,
a fact too jagged to digest.
I’m afraid to admit this line:
I’m in love.
and this time it just might be divine.
Intervention, a prescription to cure
my lonely, longing condition.
A bitter pill, but the side effects are thrills.
I sit at a campfire, watch the flames build.
The wind suspends embers across the sky,
as if I’ve been chosen to witness
but I still ask why.
Now?
After I gave up?
The flames flicker a dance of holy romance,
and I can’t help but be engulfed in the warmth.
And now I cut my true self
bleeding across this page.
Years of dismay, fortress walls,
watchtowers guarding order,
fighting disorder.
No hand to hold, yet the phantom of a promise
grazes my finger, sparking what I buried.
A stone falls from the wall.
The banners collapse.
The campfire spreads beneath my feet.
The heat suffocates, yet I feel free.
In the distance, that phantom approaches me.
I want to yell, but silence
protects the moment.
The flames wrap my knees.
This is the most terrifying, holy sight I’ve ever seen.
I pinch myself—thankfully, not a dream.
The phantom steps closer.
The rafters blaze.
The walls collapse.
Wood crackles in melodic sound.
The fire storm builds in my lungs,
my tongue swallowed in smoke.
Then I see:
the flames have wrapped around her too.
Tethered to me by an oil-soaked rope.
Her face is frightened, but she can’t let go.
Embers rain from the sky.
Neither of us ask why.
We watch in silence as the rope tightens.
Her lashes brush my eyelids.
And we just stare—
quietly.
But damn me if I speak first.
How did she slip through all my hurt?
