For Years I Held the Bottle Upside-Down, but Every Last Drop was Gone.

You cry to me to haul up your rope, but I'm at the end of mine.

My fingernails scrape the bottom of the barrel, searching for something more to give. But all I find are dirt-stained hands.

---

Put your trust in me, and watch how we destroy each other.

(I am drowning, trying to save you.)

Place your hope in me, and we will die together.

(I will hold you close, I will pull you under.)

---

I met a Man and fell in love; His name was Water-Walker.
He told me not to be afraid; He said my name was Daughter. 

He told me things I'd never known; I knew His words were true.
He said He's searching every ocean, dear; He promised me He'd rescue you.

If Only We Were Squirrels, & Could Sleep These Months Away.

Mid-October in Southern Georgia, a chill has finally taken to the air. I pull my jacket tighter, and welcome it. I welcome the season of thick socks and sweaters, of ear-warming beanies and noose-tight scarves. I welcome the change.

Which is a rarity, for me--I, who, most days, am such a resistor of change in any form. I , who, at the first sign of the season's turning, would often much rather stock up my goods, bury myself in a cave's warm belly, and drift into the sweet bliss of hibernation, than wait out the months among a world made bitter and barren with cold.

But there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven*, and hibernation has never been an option. When our time to be born is exchanged for our time to die, when our time to plant is exchanged for our time to uproot, when our time to search is exchanged for our time to give up, when our time to keep is exchanged for our time to throw away--these are the seasons our eyes strain for color, but are filled instead with only winter's gray.

What we are always forgetting is--how quickly the seasons shift. How soon the pain will pass--how inevitably the frost will melt--how marvelously those colors will be born again--and how deeply we will breathe in, that new and infinite expanse.

*Ecclesiastes 3:1.

The Day I Did Not Save the World.

The world weighs heavy, caked with dirt and sorrow. Uneven stitches stretched into a crooked smile, a seam-split in skin too paper-thin for beauty. Such fragility, these glass-wrought bones, these delicate souls tucked in heart-shaped cradles.

Yet it weighs; it weighs so heavy.

I pitched my body forward when it fell, cupped my hands to catch the sphere flung so far from its course. But it pulled me into the plummet, into the shadowed cracks of the universe. Its yoke striping my neck with creases dripping bloody, its burden curling my spine into distortion.

We fell together. The spin made me dizzy and sick. My wings crumbled, as we tumbled, into the black.

Forgive me, dear. I cannot save you. You are too heavy. You are too heavy for me.

The moments strung along like years, and for a thousand or more, I shut my eyes against the terror. But I had to learn the reason, some explanation of why, I was still breathing.

When I opened my eyes, I saw the stars singing. When I opened my ears, I heard our hearts beating. That face, that voice, those hands that held. Making existence suddenly easy, and light. And I looked past the world, over the curve of sky and sea. My gaze timid and wavering, until His steadied mine.

But not too heavy for Me, My love. Not too heavy for Me.