Like bears emerging from hibernation, we would take a tentative step: eager, yet cautious; ravenous yet lethargic; wild, yet tamed by months spent in the close comfort of our small dens.

Sleepily and warily, but with teeming excitement, we would approach other den-isolators, sharing in the beauty of the blooming Spring flowers.

The fresh air would slowly revive us, carrying scents of long-forgotten picnics and park barbeques. The young cubs would run and play and climb up trees, bounding supernovas of energy.

Then we would eat - we would go out to get the very best grub, perhaps even go fishing as a family - something we wouldn’t have done before. Family, as we’ve learned in this den of ours, is our life force.

And if we were a bear, we would remember - we would write it in our genes. We would change our habits for evolution’s sake, we would not take things for granted, we would prepare our fat stores, we would protect the Earth, we would not invest in corruption, we would discern fact from falsehood, and most importantly, we would care for and protect each other. We would learn.

We would do what it takes so future generations - our cubs, our grand-cubs and our great-grand-cubs - would know what to do when the winter comes.

Alas, we are not bears. Unlike a bear, we will surely forget.

Thoughts & musings on Palm Sunday.

History is dominated by Big Stories:

· President Kennedy is shot and killed in Dallas.

· Planes take down the Twin Towers in New York.

· Chicago Cubs win the World Series—after a 108-year drought.

All memorable...

The Bible is dominated by Big Stories, too.

· CREATION — Genesis 1:1 reads, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” Big Story. God speaks; the universe comes into existence. God speaks, and there is light. God speaks; dry land appears. God speaks; the land produces plants and trees. God speaks, and the water teems with life, birds fill the sky, creatures move along the ground. Then God creates mankind in his own image: “in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

· THE GREAT FLOOD — Genesis 6, 7, and 8 tells the story of Noah and the Ark. Big Story. Here’s what it says in Genesis 7:2–3: “Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male, and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male, and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.”

· THE EXODUS — Moses stands before Pharaoh in Egypt and says: “Let my people go,” but Pharaoh refuses until 10 Plagues befall Egypt, the 10th being the death the first-borns. While that death sentence is being carried out, God’s people are safe because they put the blood of lambs on the doorposts and lintels of their homes. Big Story.

But the Bible has its share of small stories, too:

· A woman loses a coin.

· A shepherd loses a lamb.

· A mustard seed is sown, and a plant is born.

Today I want to tell you a small story. Let’s call it, “The Donkey & the Lamb.”

The two animals are male. Owned by a Jewish family. The critters are so inconsequential, they don’t even have names: Not Fred or Jim or Jack; not Marty or Danny or Ned. Just a first-born donkey—and an unblemished lamb.

Before we move along, let me share with you a bit about these animals. Just a smidge. The donkey is a “beast of burden.” Intelligent. Sometimes stubborn. Occasionally ill-tempered. He’s been known to bite and kick. One more thing: He’s an “unclean” animal.

What does that mean?

It means the donkey could not be sacrificed at the Tabernacle. Its unclean blood could not be sprinkled on the holy altar. Its unclean meat could not be eaten by the priests and their families.

And yet (as a “beast of burden”) the donkey was important in terms of transportation and agricultural work.

How important?

According to BibleFocus.net, “The donkey, though an unclean animal, was the only one mentioned specifically to be redeemed under the law.”

Here’s what God says in Exodus 34:19-20:

“The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock. Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem all your firstborn sons.”

What about that Jewish family we talked about earlier? The one with the donkey and the lamb. God gave them a choice: Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb or break the donkey’s neck. That was it: Kill the donkey or kill the lamb.

Consider what I’m about to tell you. Let it noodle around your brain for a moment or two. The donkey is in such a bad situation that he can’t even redeem himself by dying. Nothing he can do (nothing he can say) will save him. Let’s suppose he’s a good donkey. A smart donkey. A strong donkey. An honest donkey. Those are all excellent attributes. Valuable attributes. But none are good enough to save the donkey’s life. He’s unclean.

And that’s that.

But God Himself has made a provision for that donkey. An escape clause. For a donkey! And He put it right in the Bible.

Imagine that?

Exodus 34:20 says, “Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb.”

That’s good news, right? (“HOO-ray!”) The family can save the donkey. Put him to work. Everybody gets to live “happily ever after.” Like in a fairytale. (Double “HOO-ray!”)

Except for one thing:

The family’s little lamb has to die—so the donkey can live.

I know what you’re thinking, “Wait a minute! That little lamb did nothing wrong. He is innocent in every way, shape, and form.”

Yes. You are correct. He is innocent. And that’s the point. The lamb’s innocence, its unblemished record, its perfection, is exactly the price God requires: That unclean donkey can be redeemed—by the blood of a lamb ... an innocent little lamb.

Do you remember what John the Baptist said about Jesus?

“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29)

Jesus—an unblemished innocent sent to die for the unclean—like you and like me.

Sound familiar?

Let me close with this ...

On Palm Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. Did you ever think about the fact that the donkey Jesus rode had to be redeemed by the blood of a lamb before it could work for the Lord ... That little donkey (redeemed by an innocent lamb) carried the “Lamb of God” who would die making redemption available to us.

Why?

So we can go to work for Him ... carrying the message of redemption to others.

No one understands my mind,

So I isolate.

Go through the motions,

Get the necessities done.

Eat lunch alone,

Sit in lectures alone.

I crave comfort and connection,

But only if they understand.

Tired of pretending life is beautiful,

When all I see is darkness.

A smile can only remain on my shell for so long.

Do I come out of isolation to make you feel better?

Pretending is exhausting.

Is hiding the truth considered lying?

The ones I have told pretend it never happened.

Pretend I never lost or loved.

Pretend I am not in deep despair.

Or they don’t know.

I don’t tell them,

But I hoped she would know.

I hint at my true feelings,

But she could never understand.

I don’t want your tears.

I don’t want your sympathy.

I want understanding,

But where do I find it?

Who do I find it in?

I isolate myself from everyone.

My bed is my cocoon.

I leave my safe haven for him,

The one I have lost.

He used to isolate every day,

Even from me.

Now I follow in his footsteps.

It makes sense,

We handle pain in the same way.

Blood is thicker than water.

Blood was not thicker than beer.

Or cigarettes.

Permanently alone in my mind,

No matter where my body is located.

Permanently isolated due to the trauma,

No one will ever understand.

#nonfiction #poetry #challengeoftheweek #prosepoem #loss

I guess all my life I've been a sponge. I used to refer to myself as a diary ot a tissue. People tell me their problems or use me to clean their mess then throw it away. I think there are maybe a dozen people in my life who know me very well, well to the point where they'd win money if we went on a game show together or I'd call them when was going through things. There are the observational things, the bits of me people gather from watching me, but those only get you so far. You can't tell my favorite color by looking at me since I almost always wear blue nor can you tell that I only watch the dramatic sappy shows and movies to stay up late because I always worry that something bad will happen if I go to sleep too early nor can you tell that I work a lot because I don't like to be idle since it's apparently hereditary to just not want to sit still and do nothing.

My writing doesn't exactly scream all of these things either. Writing was just an outlet from the time I was just another statistic sitting in a first grade class, itching for two o'clock when I could go to the second grade class for an hour and finally a challenge. It went from being just something I had to do to get teh strawberry-scented stickers from my grandmother in a notebook to something I would love to build my whole career and life around. I love getting lost in something, being able to tell someone else's story, leaving my body and my problems and focusing on someone else's. Whether it was a prostitute or a dog or a police officer or a fetus, I loved finding a way to give a voice to those that are often ignored or overlooked or painted in one way.

At first glance, people probably wouldn't expect me to be this way. They see my skin color and their minds run to Tyler Perry movies and rap music. They see my boobs and assume I rant about dismantling the patriarchy and had a Hillary 2016 sticker on during her whole campaign. They see a lot of who they think I am, but only someone who truly tried to read my work gets to know who I am. They see the vulnerability, the uniqueness, the perfection to detail and tend to like me instantly. They like the person that is behind the assumptions and misconceptions and the politically correct bullshit that is suffocating today's world. Which is why, four years and over 500 posts in, I still always love the "why do you write" challenges. It opens a door or a window or a mouse hole to make a new friend, annoy someone with my lengthy, ultra specific writing or let another person see a sprinkle of who I am and enjoy the tart sweetness of a speck of who I am. Thanks for the challenge.

As I lay dying, all words are unspoken while in my isolation I long to turn again, two hundred and eighty eight times. There was a season, I can't be expected to remember the hour, when I was wanted, revered, even celebrated habitually, by the masses in just about every corner of the world. I suppose the jubilation was most evident at my royal birth. Like a shiny object I was new, different, special, in my own way avant-garde. I imagine seeing all of them that loved me long ago cradling my healthy spine, holding me on their lap, staring at me pensively in wonder, touching me, unable to put me down. But that was then and this is now and like me, all things shall pass, grow old, collect dust, and become neglected, eventually turning into dust. Although I can sense my demise is on the horizon, I am still hopeful and not belittled, that is, as long as others like you come along and decide to revive me; then, I just may survive and embrace another wind. Either way it has been a good life, of this I am sure, and I owe all my success, my accolades to him. Along with the others, I am eternally grateful for his genius. Although he is long gone from this earth, wouldn't William Faulkner love to know I am still desired? Come. Pick me up off the shelf. Dust me off. Read me. Turn my two hundred and eighty eight pages one at a time. Keep me alive, As I Lay Dying.

Alone in my bedroom

Just me and the stars

They seem so lonely too

My mind rushes with commotion

Yet it does so by itself

Single thoughts are isolated

Left to be discovered on their own

Trapped in my mind I start to think

Really think about everything

No other soul to share with

No other mind to connect to

No other heart to break

It eats my brain until there is only skull

My eyes bulge and explode into nothingness

While my soul is lifted from its cell

I invited others to my house party

But they are always busy

So my mind is left to its own devices

And what it does is unsettling

But that's what happens what you are alone

Hunger is for suckers. Crying is for losers and I’d rather drown in the Allegheny River never to be seen again then stand upon an Achilles heel. If I open my eyes it makes no difference, so I let my lids rest. The black dark blinds me and is as soft as the moist moss beginning to grow on top of his grave where I lay each night since they lowered the box a million miles deep under my bent heart. No one will find me here; my family may be looking for me, maybe not because I was never convinced by any of them that I was not invisible and that love was not an albatross; love was a constant drip drip drip between contempt, impatience and avoidance splashed in stained cups and drank without sugar.

Brad was so deserving of his posthumous Purple Heart, but was I deserving when he called me Precious with so much love it boiled? Imagine? Me? Precious? If a soul has a mate, he was mine, until a bomb dropped on us in the form of a tiny blue plastic calculating capsule representing systematic slaughter, all in the name of democracy; as if a rifle placed in the hands of a disengaged 18 year old had something to do with freedom.

Anticipation crawled up our spines delivering ice cubes while we sat side by side preferring to run an infinite marathon to anywhere else other than our own skin while we watched the Vietnam War draft lottery on a 13 inch Sony Triniton. The word HAPPY was erased from it’s cousin, BIRTHDAY when the number 5 was pulled and written next to Brad’s birth date, October 18th. Morbidly freezing my bare broken eyes, the inside of a grotesque morgue grew inside my brain; raw body parts severed by muddled bludgeoning hands hung in the room like veal.

“Why?” I didn’t ask because there could be no explanation. “Why couldn’t those bulbous fingers at the end of the dark suit sleeve reaching into the poisonous drum have picked the capsule to the right instead, pulling up a number like 333?” Neither of us bothered to flinch at the news, comfortably turning into igneous rock, because a dog knows when to let his pack walk on ahead without him when it’s time to lay down and die, so Brad did nothing other than slowly move his right hand up to his neck to straighten his collar, clearing his throat of dreams. Surrendering, unable to touch for a minute too long, unwilling to speak of the dirty word spelled out on the hazy black and white screen in blood;

V I E T N A M, the seven loathsome letters handed us both the inescapable warrant for our arrest.

On the day of the funeral, not one of them standing there sniveling saw me. Although I’m sure their emotions were personally heartfelt, they were too busy weeping like fools into their hankies to notice me. All of them congregated acceptingly over the mocking folded American flag caressing the wood as they lowered the casket. When the ceremony was over, I watched one and all of the able bodies walk away from his death on two legs, returning to a warm house where they stuffed tuna casserole and overcooked lasagna into their eager mouths, intermittently wiping their eyes, eventually drifting off to sleep, waking to an alarm, heading back to school, to work, to living with facts.

There is no evening security guard for the cemetery where I sleep on top of Brad and I almost wish that there was, because from time to time taunting teenagers hunting for the ghosts that don’t want to give them the time of night jump the fence, trying to rabble-rouse the dead that would tell them if they could, “Get a life.” I can always hear them in the distance when they are approaching and I hide like a ninja warrior princess behind a tree or a mausoleum escaping discovery and their lofty notions each and every time, until they quickly surrender, spooked without evidence, chilled to the bone; they exit and I return comfortably to where I belong, where I want to be instead of 16 feet under the rushing water over my dead body.

A fisherman on the Allegheny thought he saw my spirit when it lifted up past his boat heading towards the cemetery and he wasn’t mistaken. Convincing himself I was only a dropped cloud, he went right back to fishing and caught a 40 inch Pennsylvania musky, which dominated his evening story, as fish tales always do, at the corner tavern over a frosty mug of beer, forgetting all about me, the dropped cloud, which is so much easier to explain than seeing the spirit of one sad dead girlfriend.

The living can’t explain after death rules, so there was no heads up for me about where we go when we die. When I strapped the weights around my waist and walked into the water the same day I got the news confirming Brad’s death, I know now I took a chance.

“Where are you Brad? I’m tired of sleeping dead on your grave without you. Come out come out wherever you are so we can get this show on the road. Are you still down there or is there something I don’t know about cowards and heroes needing to be kept segregated after death? Wouldn’t that just be our luck? Much to my chagrin, I must admit that whole number 5 luck of the draw thing is haunting me, making me hunger for you, but don’t worry, I won’t cry.”

I was once walking,

Calm as a still summer night with chirping crickets

Content as a purring cat curled up beside a fireplace

Innocent as a baby bird before ever taking flight

Radiant as the moon adding light to a dark world

Now I am running,

Unclear of a direction

Frightened to look behind

Yet petrified to look ahead

Maybe if I close my eyes, the ground will stand still

If I could only catch my breath for an instant

Ever since the snow, I quickened my pace

Suffocating with a smile plastered on my face

Heart pounding even when fast asleep

Dizzy and sweating,

Yet my toes are ice cold

Running from the past because the memories are too vivid

Just a reminder of what I have lost

I miss the simple days,

The days of playgrounds and sprinklers and ice cream trucks

The nights of movies and sleepovers and star gazing

I miss his voice and his hugs and his humour

Memories that can never be recreated because he is gone

Why remember the time when smiles were more common than cries?

So I forgot for the moment

I wonder if I will ever remember again

If I will ever want to remember

Running through life,

Letting moments of happiness and achievement pass me by

My eyes dart from place to place

I twist the ring on my finger as my mind spins

Focus lost, only confusion remains

How will I live without him by my side?

Running ahead and never turning my head

I will need a break from it all soon

Trying to slow down,

Learning to catch my breath and feel in control again

Hoping for a future filled with unwavered joy

Even without him, I pray for my success

I see him but he’s too far to reach

Patience will guide me through the years,

and comfort me through the days

But

I will

Get

To

Him

Faster

By

Ru n n i n g