i wonder what my heart looks like
after the washing away of all
the filings, the shavings
replete with scents of
graphite and wood
and scryed metal
filigreed and

final?

i wonder
if it’s beautiful,
if it’s a testimony
to something?  To someone?
In the midst of loss and abandonment
of everything by everyone I love and held
close and dear, I wonder if God abandons me, here?

The loneliness of exile echoes
the darkness of captivity
and always the marking,
the marking of the prisoner
and the marking by a prisoner

and the markings
Of a God who cannot forget
and cannot be forgotten.

God carves with the sword of sorrows
baptised in great inkwells of Shalom
and my heart Their Ready Slate

God mixes beauty and ashes and oil
and Shalom is Their medium and message

(my heart torn and bloody)

and gift of peace, God’s offering
of well-being, God’s great good news
and saving salutation…

and I never need to hold it
because God writes it into me
to make it me, and make me it,
to hold it, smell it and to taste it,
to be gathered in forever
and delivered from all grieving…

I wonder what it looks like
my heart within my soul?