Tell Me a Story: Poems
2019
Poems from the project Tell Me a Story
an ocean in my eyes
and only a few will ever see it.
deep and powerful and gentle,
peaceful, wild, and passionate.
beautiful and vast,
i hold the world inside.
a force to be reckoned with
and strong enough
to let you see my heart.
there is a little girl
who lives inside me;
she begs me to play with her—
“i’ll hide and you seek.”
but i have never given in to her pleas
and she has stayed in hiding for so long
that i’ve begun to wonder if she’s still there.
i miss her sometimes
and i wish that i could give her
what she never had
but i don’t know how.
i wish you would see
me
the me i am when you’re not here
and the me i dream of becoming.
i wish you would tell
me
that you like when i’m around
and that you wish i would stay.
when i felt that my heart
could not break any more,
it was found
by the tender hands that made it,
the hole left by the father i never had
filled by a king who knew my name
before i knew his.
i get the sense that
he doesn’t care if we’re
adequate
because all that matters
is that he is.
i will follow you
though i do not know where you
are going. i must,
i must go with you,
even though i fear that first
i will be broken.
i know i should trust you
but i’m tired of shoulds.
is it wrong for me to long
for what makes me feel alive?
is it wrong for me to grieve
that i never got to give back to you
the fruit of what i know you planted
deep in my heart?
i am restless
yet i cling to the hope
that something is happening beneath the soil
that i cannot see
and that the fruit of all this waiting
will be something far beyond
what i could ever dare to dream.
a seed must die first
before it rises to new life
and produces a crop one hundredfold
of what was planted.
i dig deep down and
surrender the seeds to the
earth, doubting, hoping.
i don’t know why
it has been so hard.
i don’t understand
why i cannot ever love something
and keep it at the same time
for all that i have ever loved
has been lost.
i will give you what i have
and even more
whatever it takes
to make you feel heard
seen
honored
and held.
if i ever found a genie
i would tell him
i wish
i did not always have to be the one
to stand up for myself.
i wish
i did not have to be brave and strong.
i wish
that i could be allowed to be a child
again.
when i was young i joined the theater
and learned how to inhabit another world,
to give up my face
and play the role i was given.
i loved the escape it brought,
the chance to immerse myself
in someone else’s story,
but somehow along the way
i never put my own face back on.
and i have only just begun to discover
that there is something beneath
the layers i’ve built up
over time.
i like the face i have
but my audience wants the character
they’ve come to see on stage,
and they ask me to put on
the face they’re comfortable with,
wondering why
i would ever try to be someone else—
not realizing that what they see
is not someone else.
it’s me.
like a rose waiting to open
i hold my heart wrapped tight in my chest.
i put forth my most beautiful colors
but i never realized
that the greatest beauty lies in what i hide
and that unfolding
will be the most terrifying
and the most liberating
thing
i will ever do.
how strange it is
that a heart torn apart by disease
and long years of grief
can only be mended by being broken still more,
in my willing submission to one
who must cut me open
and see the hurt that lies within.
but oh what joy there is
in surrendering to the hands
that can put me back together
again.
what wondrous grace it is
that i can be a mess
and still it shows his glory.
what joy to know
that my inadequacy is precisely how
he births beauty through me.
like a child teach me,
slowly, slowly,
how to open my hands,
how to let go of what i was convinced
was the best thing for me,
how to receive the story
you have written—
not for them, but for me.
i always expected
that each next step would bring new life
but with each thing born
i have witnessed a thousand deaths.
yet while i mourn the things i’ve buried,
each grave is marked
by a stone that tells a story:
“even till now he helped me.”
sadness is a friend
that i wish i was not so
well-acquainted with.
i am only small,
but like a bird who
has not yet learned to fly,
i know that i am different somehow.
i wish that i could be as free
as other birds,
leaping boldly into the invisible substance
that holds them up and carries them along.
how did they become strong enough
to defy the wind
and the unforgiving pull
of gravity?
like a bird with a broken wing,
i hold my weakness inside
because if i do not show that i am strong,
surely i will be snatched up
by someone stronger.
i’m fine,
really.
can’t you tell?
i’ve been all that you’ve asked me to be
and told you what you wanted to hear.
what more do you want?
can’t you see?
really,
i’m fine.
will you please stop asking me?
sometimes i wish i
did not feel so much but maybe
my tears are my strength.
see the child inside
and the burning hope that i
can change the world.
i have been nurtured
by many colors
and while i have wished
that i could have one to call my own,
perhaps it is more beautiful
this way.
maybe there’s more to you
than i thought i knew
but i want to know you
the way you want to be known.
i wrestled you through the night
but it was only when
i was broken in surrender
that you gave me the blessing
i demanded in my fear.
just when i think
there could not be any hope left,
fresh green appears
and i stare in wonder.
there was magic happening
beneath the soil;
new life born
when i least expected it.
you have been there through
all of it, despite my slowness
to see it. steadfast.
i see now
how there has been a story all along;
i was only in the middle of it.