A pilgrimage of undoing,
Failures shedding their skins.
A long unmaking of shadows
And so the trembling begins.
Years folding into each other,
Battles dissolving in dust.
Transformation never sudden,
Hope merely a quiet thrust
Against the grain of myself
Mind and heart in a looping war,
Echoes wrestling echoes,
Each one unsure.
Creation’s hands still shape me,
But forward frays at the edges;
Faith thins to a whisper
When the world tilts wrong.
A traveler mid-journey,
A wanderer unreturned;
A stone breathing in the sling,
Waiting for a moment unearned.
Walls hum before falling,
Seas hold their breath in salt;
Perfume sleeps in straw,
Prophecy curls in vaults.
The coming light gathers itself
Just beyond sight;
Two shadows hang in grief
Before love rewrites the night.
Bread remembers the breaking
Before it breaks;
Blood dreams of healing
Before the wound wakes.
There is a thin, unmoving instant
Between petition and wonder
An unnamed silence