YOU CALL ME BEAUTIFUL

I can see the ocean and the crest of the waves is the state of my mind

Peaking, frothing, moving, yearning, ready to crash, ready to move forward

What beautiful things do YOU create when you take the ax to the grind?

Abba – where am I right now and what am I moving toward

To say good bye to you is so bittersweet. I’ve said it a million times

I don’t want you in my life yet is there something real to which my love attaches?

It’s so hard to tell what seems to go together and what actually rhymes

Remembering that just because it once seemed true doesn’t mean it still matches

Letting You heal me of my shame, Abba – is so, so hard

I don’t even want to let you look at it

I would much rather sweep it under and disregard

And let my life be monochromatic

The crest rises and falls and breaks on the sand

And I am still walking along the beach not often breaking stride but calling out to YOU to draw near to me

Sometimes I don’t know if I am in the water or if I am on dry land

So many times I wish I could see what YOU see

And YOU call me beautiful

When it hurts. When it is joyful. When I am outwardly presentable and when I am outwardly in shambles

You call me beautiful

When I am inwardly ready to cave in and I reach to YOU to provide me with the rope of last resort and I am cut up and down from wandering in the rambles

You say that I am beautiful

From the shining of my soul to the light that YOU have put in my eyes YOU call me YOUR much beloved, beautiful, beautiful daughter

YOU call me beautiful no matter what the circumstances

Because when I am sinking You are treading water

Theodicy in Parentheses

How sad God was, 
and dare I say, resigned.

Wind fell. Sand fell,

and the blue night, 
an absent shade now,

a broken memory of sky.

His fingers sank through clay 
and clay rose, 

folding over like a tide.

This is called giving 
up, or it is called love.

He spat on his hands, 
cleaned them, called 

a boy alto from a distant cloud, 
newly dead, 

someone to hear his defense 
and sing it back.