Grace

Gaping Void, by Hugh MacLeod

My love for you is unconditional. it's not something I'd previously measured. It's not something I'd thought of, ever, in terms of limits. They have yet to be reached. CarolinaMom gives me the word for my love for you: agape. And that's indeed what I feel for you, my sister in my family of choice. My person.

I'm wordless at present. They're developing, and will soon be yours. Only yours. I found these, for now, from college.

I love you. As ee cummings wrote, know that I carry your heart. I carry it in my heart.

Grace

squares of sunlight fell on her feet
light broken into quarters by shadows
lost in the squares until the sun fell
the aloneness a comfort after years of being heard
only by screaming the loudest

the sun slanted through the panes as she sat in the white room
full of silence and Catholic guilt
there to realize what she did wrong
she called in desperate need
and they brought her for "healing"
the world was caterwauling outside the window
and inside her head
she found safety in her solitary occupation

it reminded her of her grandmother's house
where "Momma" was laid out for hours in respect
she had wished only to close the lid
but her mother pushed her out to play
with her visiting cousins

she should have come here years ago
before her mother bundled her off to shrink after shrink
because of the drug after drug she was given
she might not have dropped out of school
two years and now settled comfortably
in the routine of the pill and the comfort
of a nice Jewish doctor's couch

she leaves the white room, a prescription for a diploma,
and moves to Seattle
where strangers don't ask instrusive questions
the joyce carol oates questions
instead admiring her tenacity

she paints again, her first showing near the university
she spies her work at night, walking home from
her job as a dinner chef
her art and herself reflected
through the front room window
its corner, the ghost of the annual church fair at home
the carnival's swings brightly lit
the chairs swirling at mad angles
the moon waning above, haloed in clouds
men, tilted from drinking, sobering up in the bingo hall
women catching up on parish news

she races the leaves home in the brisk evening
tripping across her childhood supersition
three circles of gusting leaves as bad luck
she stops. waiting. watching.
the fourth circle spirals from the ground
her leisurely pace resumes
calling "ollie ollie in come free"


James, by Mark Tonra