Unfettered

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “In Good Faith.”

Midwestern child, alone in my sorrow
No hope of home or cleanliness
no peace in my skin.

Until there is a light of love,
embraced by a faith I could touch.
Hymns, beautiful voices, intoxicating smells
of unity.

I took from that experience to mean family,
community with those who commune with God
and yet
I only ever latched onto the concept of karma.
I kept waiting for God to smite me with the bad things
after I had been bad.

The rest was nostalgia, wrapped up in my grandmother’s arms
or the smell of sacramental wine on my mother’s breath
the piercing resentment of tasting the Lord
through vicarious means.

How funny, the way I can peel God away
when I unlock my misery from His hands
and place it firmly into my own.

It no longer comforts me to know if He’s there

I am here, unfettered from the wash of wistfulness
finding peace in my present home
and feeding the children of my sorrow.