Revival
Each night
I pray that I will meet my lover once again.
His name rhymes with survival.
His song sings ‘revival’.
Each night
I pray that I die
to this world and that we – my lover and I –
are born again into the same body.
I stretch
and rub my fingertips over the
small of my back, tracing them up
to my shoulders.
One arm crossed diagonally over my chest where the weight of
the world
rests
heavy
and
burdensome.
As I press my fingertips
down, I pierce the surface
of my skin, already bruised and
broken. It screams silent and suffocated sounds. Though I am no longer in
tune with the sensations of this shell I once called home.
I am hollow
but He hears me – echoes through me.
Only He can hear – can feel – my pain writhing in His own body.
The muscle tissue is no longer fleshy and alive as it once was but has
congealed into a
concrete mass, like the rocks forming the foundation of the very ground
beneath
my
knees.
I once was a soldier fighting for freedom. Now I am reduced to that which forms the battleground.
At most I am a prayer warrior –
But a worrier just the same.
Though I am young, my body has a lifetime of battle scars. It is fatigued by the weight of
the world
resting
heavy
and
burdensome on my shoulders. Each night, I pray that the waves of the wind whistle through me – carry me to the finish line where I may
rest
at the feet of my lover, where I may wash His feet in the sweetest smelling perfumes.
Perfumes enriched with the purest gold, the most pungent frankincense and aromatic myrrh.
I pray that the suffering comes to a standstill
and that the air, once thick and charred with the fiery, hot and humid stench of pollution, is purified by the living waters that run through me –
that live in me,
and you.
Image Credits: Yohann Libot – https://unsplash.com/photos/pRUdOHLEmsQ