Today I woke up and noticed something
when I was throwing on clothes in the dim
light that shines around corners--
my skin looked wrong--
and somehow I knew to move
gingerly or risk coming apart
where my seams were sewn.
In the light of the bathroom mirror
I saw myself a patchwork
of loneliness and fear.
“Pray,” I heard my father’s advice,
so often quoted my ears echo it like
a conch remembers the ocean.
I tried. Honest, I did.
I tried to expand the window of my awareness
to the size of God’s face.
I failed. And failure hurt.
So I found myself on the floor
under a ragged blanket as patchwork as myself
and I shrank the world to the size
of my child’s face and found
Gratitude.
