Ours is a Story of Repair
Ours is a story of repair.
We came to it broken.
Torn images, missing scenes.
You remember a red butterfly.
I remember yellow angel trumpets.
We wanted honey.
Bees were everywhere.
And they stung, never the same bee, never the same reaction.
We made our own hives and stored our questions.
Did the daisies pop up on their own, or did we plant them?
If our stories aren’t the same, which one is true?
I remember baby ducks hiding from the heat under the cactus.
You remember seeing your breath in the cold morning air.
One of us remembers a blue-belly lizard dead in her pocket.
Yet another, standing on a stool by the kitchen sink washing mother’s hair.
We pretended fairies were as real as butterflies and pansies had faces.
Did we run away, climb out an open window or were we yanked out by desperate DNA?
Who crushed the wings of the Song Bird we couldn’t name?
Even now can we bear to own our part?
We did a lot of spinning.
We quit pointing fingers.
When we were at our best, we prayed.
Stories opened their arms to us.
We ran to capture every word.
One story and then another and another.
We found God in places we felt alone
We named all that could be named.
We surrendered our pasts.
We became the good endings of our dreams.
We learned… if it isn’t good it isn’t the end.