POETRY
15
Home punctuates in French doors, staircases, and picture frames; in ceiling fans, antique cabi-
nets, and window panes.
Yet more clearly than home’s structure of sound rings its resonance—what home says, the heart
of what home communicates.
And that is safety. That is release.
That is faces first thing in the morning and words last encountered before falling sleep.
That is compassion. That is care.
That is the quiet of eternity unfolding and the subtlety of moments in between and unaware.
That is challenge. That is probing.
That is the questions I don’t want to be asked and the grace to wade through the risk of not
knowing.
That is empathy. That is togetherness.
That is the relief of an embrace worn by memories and the life emboldened with the confidence
That no matter who rejects or disregards or diminishes me,
Here is a place of people who have seen the best and worst in me
And yet they remain.
In the pregnant void of sentences unsaid, I sense the sound of their steadiness.
The same love that birthed me sees the worth in me—and helps me see it when I can’t.