As I posted yesterday, when I was younger during Holy Week, I think I believed on Good Friday Jesus actually showed up and died again. One of the most challenging aspects of carrying this belief around as a child is that after you leave Good Friday mass, there was this day where we were just left in limbo. It was a day of 'waiting,' essentially. It was the great in-between time between two significant events. As a child, that one day felt awkward and strange. As an adult, it feels like what we would describe as 'the in-between time,' or 'life.' It is the time we spend the most time in. We are typically bookended by exciting events; however, it's not strange that it's not an exciting event. It's more strange to be somewhere other than in the in-between or 'the waiting.' We live the majority of our existence in this time. As I was looking through poems surrounding this topic, the amount is incredible. There is so much writing that occurs in this time. We wait to have feelings reciprocated. We wait to have feelings/ relationships end or begin. We wait for notification from the doctor that we or someone we love's prognosis. We wait to accept new challenges, for them to begin to feel like they've become part of our every day. We wait for prayers to be answered, for politics to change, for people, places, events. There's waiting in almost everything we do. It's an uneasy place to rest certainly; however, it can be anxiety provoking and it can be extremely exciting. It is as the late great Tom Petty wrote, 'the hardest part,' because sitting in uncertainty (good or bad) is just an uncomfortable position for all of us to sit in.
Resurrection
You will return Forgetting dinner Huddled in your mother's quilt, Wearing the same flesh, Perspiring the same baffling conflict, Continuing to make blue a conflicting color for me.
All your evicted natural flaws will be Handed to me like a bouquet of Black Eyed Susan's. Lonely as a poached orchid At a roadside stand on a Florida back highway, You will be. The nothing from Your lips will shred me
Into tiny confetti pieces that only promise To stain the pristine white of every room of my being, Purposefully decorated colorless After you left. I cannot deny
You as the water in the vase, My dry stem has been longing for, The unbreakable cookie jar finally full, you appear Gnashing my hours, my skin, My palpable heart.
Like Redwood, You cannot burn me on the outside. You'll just singe right through the middle Burning me at my core.
Oak Roads: Poetry and Musings 