Abba

What are you worried about?
I’m right here, you said.
I’m always going to be right here.

Wanted and got,
needed and appeared,
missed and had—
a tiny hand folded inside a big one,
veins like blue rivers under bark.
What are you worried about?
I’m right here.

My face had been thunder—
the smashed plate, the slammed door.
You swallowed the storm,
my words heatless stones thrown into grass.
What are you worried about?
I’m right here.

Hands like a walnut tree,
scarred but still shading;
I learned gentleness from you.
Could have thrown things around,
Could have made me afraid,
I learned to trust men from you.

My voice sparking, expostulating,
splintering, arguing, doubling back.
A patience in the tone of your carried sound—
a muezzin’s note on a high wind.
You didn’t need to convince,
only to look sad and hopeful,
and I found bare feet on the cool stone path,
myself returning to the straight path
for you.

You kept an image of me:
innocent, gentle,
a girl lit by her own soft candle.
The image in your head
Doesn't exist in real life
But I'm damned if I don't try and make it to.

If only to step for once
into the light of your lightning.

Shame and blame and rot and filth
the buzzing flies
of blame and gossip—
they have no place here.
We're walking through martyr’s sanctuaries,
I leave it all behind at the edge.
Here the earth smells of prayer rugs and rain.
Here we walk on sacred space.
What are you worried about?
says the voice that once was yours.
I turn, and the air stirs.
I look for your ghost.
I’m right here, you say.
I’ll always be right here.