sum

hopes 

tempered 

by dread 

I dream 

dream 

of safety 

so foreign  

it frightens 

long for 

a future 

I can 

hardly 

remember 

to want 

like 

the softest moss 

found on the 

hardest rock 

I find 

fear 

nestled 

to faith 

I search 

for 

what doesn’t 

hide 

hoard 

what 

I cannot 

posses 

the sprout,   

it whispers,

“the rot of mulch 

gives root to much” 

so

what 

then 

of 

this? 

like manure 

in a 

a rose 

garden 

this love,

I resent,

a gift 

that embraces 

what I yearn 

to reject 

its givenness,

my earning

efforts, 

humiliates 

decomposing 

defenses,

making fertile

my 

nakedness – 

it utters, 

the sprout,

“beauty 

softening 

so hard 

bestows 

– surrender “

is this 

what it is 

to bloom?  

to trust, 

as sweet,

the stench 

of my own 

dissolution 

to wait 

as worthless

are made 

my weapons  

to rest 

in the 

exhausting 

effort  

of letting 

love 

dismantle 

me? 

to trust

my undoing  

as the 

precise place 

of my 

very 

unfurling? 

how 

strange

it is to blossom 

when 

I fear the 

thing that 

saves. 

reject   

the love 

I need.  

fail to

remember 

what I  

I’ve  

already 

always 

known. 

is this what

it is to grow? 

to believe

beauty 

is bound 

to death, 

wholeness 

is bound 

to brokenness 

salvation 

is in

the stench? 

if we are 

the sum 

of our contradictions

consider 

this 

my 

equation.