Healing

I had, until recently, a mole. Small, somewhat innocuous, and centered directly over my larynx. It is in nearly every picture of me and is, to me, as much a part of my face as my nose. Alas, one day, it stopped seeming so innocuous and grew dark and raised, doubtless preparing for a devastating conquest that would end in glorious victory for all things moley. The doctor pumped it full of liquid and snipped it off. As they whisked it off to the lab, I wished it a fond farewell, despite the fact that it could have bourne within it the seeds of my undoing. The scar is just now healed and my neck now cleanly spans the distance between head and shoulders. Still, the mole persists in my rare attempts at self-portraiture and in the picture of myself I carry in the wallet of my mind.


I was born with a cancer on my soul, a black fungus with tentacles and teeth that gnawed on my ego. Its grip was poisonous, but I grew used to the company. I welcomed the deadly and inescapable embrace and tried to believe it wasn't killing me. It is gone now, blasted away and burnt out of me. But who am I now that I have been freed? I sprout tentacles and cannibalize myself sooner than surrender to the Surgeon. I keep drawing the thing back in with thick lines of charcoal. I am no longer beholden to the beast, so why do I live as though I am?


I am a healed paralytic who will not walk, a restored leper who still covers her face. I want to welcome the remedy, forgetting that, beneath the bandages, I bear glorious, healed scars.

Moon

I am caught in a deathly spiral, my face always turned to the world. Pockmarked and dusty, bearing no trace of life. Alone I turn, through darkness into darkness.But sometimes, I catch the light. I borrow beams too bright to be bourne, and light is cast into dark. In spite of myself I shine. But I feel all the more keenly that I have no light of my own and lack even the tenacity to reflect sunlight consistently. I yearn to hide my ugliness, the gouges in my skin. I bury my face in the world and fade into the black. And so I am again but a scarred stone swinging through space. I tug fruitlessly at the distant seas, trying to pull them over my head as I wait for the everlasting dawn when I will be overwhelmed with ubiquitous light, transcended and rendered obsolete as a means of luminescence. Surrendering my post, I will bask in endless Day.



(And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk.
Rev 21:23-24)