God.
Do you see me?
Do you care?
Are you
even
there?
My life
is a hurricane,
a ferocious swirl
of cloud, wind, and rain,
and there ain’t
no superdome
like New Orleans had
to shield me.
Poverty
is an understatement.
A joke.
I’ve broken
Guinness records
won golden medals
for the
minutes,
hours,
days,
weeks
I go
without a crumb crossing my cracked lips.
and so,
I’m pretty sure
there is no
God.
Where was he
when the tsunami
waves of liquor
kept smashing into
my father’s liver?
He could have
delivered him
from his addiction,
but he didn’t.
And where was he
when the ground split
beneath my feet
and left me
straddling the crack
between my mother and father?
Both
tugging me
trying to save me
from the other.
The bible says
what God has joined together,
let no man
tear asunder
so why wouldn’t you call down from heaven
with a voice of thunder
and merge the ground again?
Exerting your force
to reverse the divorce.
Instead,
my family
was earthquaked.
I changed
the noun into a verb
because it’s
almost like
someone did this to me
on purpose.
And God let’s pull back the curtain
even more.
I remember
when I was fourteen
that man,
and I won’t say his name,
took his…
tornado
and tore up my insides.
Yeah
when a natural disaster comes,
you must hide
too.
***
Dear Daughter,
That. Is not. True.
I wove you in your mother’s womb,
and since then,
I have never left you.
Today you are alive
because I
woke you up this morning
with a precious kiss of life.
I held my arm out and let you lean on me to rise.
I am your faithful compass
who shows you where to find
the “crumbs” you eat.
And I
give you
supernatural strength to sustain you
between cuisines.
When your father was drinking
I was the shield
between you and the fists
he concealed
behind his back.
He chose
to drown in the sin of drunkenness
rejecting the life jacket of Jesus’ righteousness
I extended to him.
And when
your parents
kicked their wedding rings
in the gutter
I shuddered
knowing
how it would break you.
And it was my superglue
that repaired and remade you.
Even after the unforgettable:
the unnamable doing the unmentionable
and leaving you feeling
unlovable and unfixable.
Don’t think he won’t be held accountable,
cause I’ll get him.
But in the meantime,
I’m just merciful to sinners.
That’s why I did
what no one you know would ever do for you.
I disowned my own son
pushed him out of heaven
to be tortured
with more pain
than you have ever had
or can ever imagine.
And he, too, asked me
why have you
forsaken me?
And my reply
is that
I haven’t.
I see you.
I deeply care.
And I am always, always there.