How did it make me see you
when we rewound tapes that made you?
“Only more positively.”
How easy, how vague,
how very unlike the tapes that we gave,
how very unlike the shaping wounds we replayed,
so let me try to explain.
Maybe some of it was how our hearts and brains
could trace along familiar broken ways,
could relive parts of each other’s past pain
with little need for power of imagination.
It was nice to trace another’s ways,
to do something with pain besides rumination,
to do something with pain besides isolation,
and not just put it on display, but trade in such a way
that I can see both of us more clearly in each other,
those darks only give more meaning to our brighter colors.
Everything you do is more vibrantly painted:
When I see you laugh, I see your faith
that God gives new grace every day.
When I see you lead, I see you’re brave,
that you’re actively overcoming your anxious brain.
When I see you work, I see you create
more meaning, more purpose than what was taken away,
I see you constantly testifying to Christ’s offer of a clean slate.
When I see you with that fifty-yard gaze
I know you’re wandering deep in a bristly maze.
You don’t have to put on a different face.
I never expect you to be more than who you are,
the full spectrum of you with all your scars,
both those gilded gold and the still raw shards.
different faces 