Week negative one

My body is built for school,

 

for the minutes squared off into little boxes,

for the bodies filling up all the corners,

for the friends waiting inside my back pocket,

for the space in my mind on the walks to classes,

 

for all the things that I call my Normal,

that I want to fall into so much it scares me…

(so much that I know I’m romanticizing).

 

So I’m frantic for the end of waiting,

of the plodding on of a heart so eager

that my chest is growing, anticipating filling

with all the things that it’s used to breathing;

and it’s growing tight with the ache of homesick,

and it’s gonna burst if this drags on longer…

 

Week zero

Slowly, slowly, the grounds start living.

Work is ending (but just beginning).

The lunchroom is filling with common faces

(though not quite the ones that tame my tension),

and lingering questions are swelling, then settling

so I can step in with an empty to-do list.

 

Softly, softly, the birds start singing

in tunes that come back in nostalgic memory,

filling gaps I forgot were missing

with rhythms as simple as milk and doorways.

 

Finally, finally, we sing together

in a fellowship hall that reflects my hunger

and we celebrate learning and living God’s way,

to announce together Our time’s beginning…

 

and then I come home to a brand new safety,

to arms that know me and gaps that need me,

and I can cry off all my tension

in sacred spaces that finally fill me.

 

Week one

And so I think that the way is easy

into the skin that my soul is made for

(though I know my lungs are still parched from wanting

so really I ought to expect the bleeding…)

but muscles atrophy in a state of inertia,

and things don’t fit when I know they used to.

 

The minutes won’t square and my time is filling

so much that I think that I’m overbreathing,

hyperventilating on all the things I’ve needed.

It’s a long, long night beneath scratchy covers,

an awkward rearrangement of too many limbs

into positions that used to relax me…

 

Week positive two

it’s a weekend of quiet, of listening and telling,

just the one-on-one that calms the crawling;

it’s a soft reminder that God will use me

and a good night’s sleep while the sky is weeping.

 

It’s a matter of time until pieces find places,

until muscle memory gathers my members.

The lump of clay finally bends in my fingers

if I wait for the wheel to spin me a cadence.

 

My body is built for learning, for living,

so at length it gathers a dewy Normal.