What would I feel, what would I know, right now,

If somehow I could walk this road again?

If vision could have been untwisted--how?

What would the past have felt and shown, and when?

Because, enveloped in a load, you can

still live as if a little strange, okay--

but inside you're always scared, and then

each feeling twists, and you can't chart a way.

You fight to be affected, every day,

but then emotions forced or sometimes prayed

turn upside down and backwards, whirl and stay

and underneath it all you're just afraid.

Without a load, with faith grown undelayed,

what memories were then, have scattered, strayed.

A buried longing adds to living's weight.

The weary fear--at last I understand.

A Stillness, silence, turns alone to fate--

my heart is hidden by an untrained hand.

I am a wild thing perched on shifting sand.

Alive where efforts seem to just confuse--

while never lighted love makes living bland--

we still turn words to codes, still make a ruse,

I wonder what connections we all lose.

We've built a world where language bounces back.

We wonder if it wants us as we choose;

inside, we cling to what we know we lack.

It's why we try so hard to keep on track,

but why we cry at Mass when all is black.

If we could climb the clouds and fall straight up--

ask questions that look simple when they're not,

just break our tired truths, our old clay cups--

the Church first showed me how to fix life's plot.

Things I burned to say, with stigma's blot,

the cockiness in me that had to die,

I'm stubborn just because I'm scared. I'm not

so used to being truly taught. That's why,

remembering what was, was all a lie,

the language from the Church welds body, soul,

and makes it real now when I need to cry.

Free will is sacred here with God, and whole.

Love is my purpose, rightfully my role.

It makes sense here, at Mass, in Lover's bowl.

Each time I come to be with you, my fear,

a burden tumbling into Jesus tomb,

you carried it for me this time, this year,

you let me grow, you gave me love and room.

We learned that life from death, hope born from doom

becomes our unstained light, eternal home.

My safety net, the dizzy spinning womb--

the old that sometimes surfaces in foam--

it's gone now, pushed outside the real world's dome,

but what's within is still enough to scare.

I couldn't see, that made me fear and roam,

a lot is awful when you over-care.

You've built a shelter, inside, where

this world looks possible to love and share.

--April 26, 2004

I wrote this for my RCIA class when I came into the Catholic Church. I had the chance to stand in front of the class and read it to everyone. I remember … mostly a big blur of nervousness. But a lot of hugs afterwards.