Raptured

What happened to her was
a mistake, completely
unintentional. When people
with poor eyesight mingle
with those with selective
hearing accidents happen.

The blow came out of nowhere
and slammed against her right temple.
It was as sudden as it was quick.
Shock waves radiated through
to the place ineptly referred
to as the heart. Not the vessel of
ventricles and veins but the immutable
core of her foundation.

In the melee she was certain
she’d lost her face. Acting upon
what she thought was true, made
it true. Mirrors were of no use.
The sting of the blow distorted
her vision.

The loss of her face affected
not only her but the whole world.
If you stop and think about it, the
world suffers in the wake of lost
faces.

Her search was one of seasons
out of order. Of Summers
Protesting.

Of winters resisting.

Of Autumns reluctantly
waving.

Although Spring came
and went with its predictable
fevers, the time of its arrival
and the stint of its stay was
all a curious gamble.


Years passed and in their
passing, she could not
remember what she once knew.
The pain of misremembering
was too much. So she numbed
herself as best she could and
lived in a place of dreams. Her
dreams were her friends. They
tried to inform her, to show
her the true shape of her
face. But so much time had
passed in the absence of her
knowing that she failed to
understand how to benefit
from what
seemed too long
misremembered.

One day she happened upon
Hush, Shush and Silence. They
came out of nowhere. The three
of them – naked and unassuming.
At first they pointed her away
from herself and then
turned her around. They
told her what she didn’t
remember forgetting.

“You did not conceive
yourself - neither did your mother,
even less your father. You arrived
by way of your mother, by way of
your father, but you were featured
and breathed by God.”

These words brought her
to her knees. Collapsing in
a pool of her own salted waters,
she beheld her forgotten face.
She was more
beautiful and
marred than
she imagined.

This was a snatching moment,
A moment of rapture.
A moment of everything being
restored. First and foremost,
her view of God and next the
view of herself. Once she saw
God truly, the conflicted
view of herself held no sway.

And then she could see
other things, darkness
as well as unending
light. She could see
simple things and things
complex beyond all
questions.

Her sight gave her inexplicable
wings. Suddenly, she was a woman
of triplicate choice. She could
either choke on her freedom,
languish beneath it or
launch herself beyond the known.

She chose the latter,
Springing up through
a compression of regrets
and longings, the
impossible bloom of
herself arose. There in its
shade she vowed to love
herself as much
as she loved others.

This vow was
instantly tested in a
mighty rain. This rain
was not the ilk of
thunderheads, but the ilk of
what others confused her
to be and the temptation
to act on their confusion.
Once it erupted,
it continued to erupt.

Bent on freedom, she wove
a rope from what had long been
covered and bore the
blossom of her true self along.

Naturally, her strength waned.
She admitted her lack and
become gloriously small, little to
the point of greatness. Caught up
by the buzz of all she was not and the
sweetness of pretention ceased, she
was carried skyward.

And then she was placed
high with the wind powerless
against her. Here she threw off
her shoes. Glimpsing back and
gazing ahead, she got big
again.

With her arms she made a steeple.
With her legs, a harp. She let herself
cry and extended herself
for the harvest of her tears.

The crop was a song
of remembrance. In a rush
of a million wings, a trillion
seeds, countless petals and
bulging pods, it sustained
her. It was the song waking things
sing and waking things perceive.
The music itself became
a kind of ravishing mirror.
Gazing into it she would
remember the faces once
long forgotten.
God’s first and
then her own.