I bought a pomegranate.

The fruit sat on my counter
for three days,
hard as a clenched fist.

When I cut it open

all those red chambers.

A hundred glossy reasons
to stay quiet.

I pulled the seeds free
my fingers stained

like I had touched
the inside of an animal.

I carried you around for months

like a mouthful of arils.
The promise of something sweet.

The reality of a hard bitter seed hidden inside
when I finally bit down.

You know, you can eat the entire aril–
the juice and the seed–
or chew the pulp
and spit out the seed.

I saw which seed would grow and which would not.

I swallowed all of them.

Delicious.

You saw a fracture
and dismissed the whole vessel.

One weakness…
and suddenly the voice meant nothing.
One inconsistency…
and you folded your arms like righteousness
had finally found someone smaller to stand beside.

You point. You call out.

You dissect another man’s struggle
as though leadership requires divinity,
as though the messenger was ever meant
to become the Message.

Tell me…

when did we start demanding perfection
from people still kneeling for mercy?
When did weakness become disqualification
from speaking truth?

Yes, there is wisdom in caution.
A drowning man should not teach swimming.
A blind guide should not direct the path.
A man lost in the woods should not be yelling,
“follow me, I know a shortcut!”

If someone speaks from a place
he himself refuses to walk,
discernment matters.
Common sense should not be ignored.

But you…

you act as though one unfinished battle
erases every truth they carry.
As though a man wrestling one temptation
cannot recognize another.
As though scars justify silence.

Did you forget?

Truth remains truth
even when carried by trembling hands.
A cracked mirror may distort,
but it still catches light.

And what a strange expectation this is…

You expect leaders to be flawless
while preaching a Gospel
built upon grace for the flawed.
You want shepherds without wounds,
teachers without struggles,
voices without contradiction.

Yet, Scripture has always been full of broken men
used anyway.

Not gods.

Men.

Fighting pride.
Fear.
Doubt.
Temptation.

Learning surrender
while teaching it.
Failing, repenting, rising again.

Because the point was never perfection.
The point was pursuit.

And you might consider…
before dismissing every word from imperfect lips,

Are you rejecting truth…

or just disappointed
that the one speaking it
still looks human?

And when the sun dies black
clouded and blind
We could still live, I think
Maybe underground,
unless it’s also turned to mush and rock
the kind that kills you, still beautiful
and glowing green
We could still be alive, maybe
If we have each other
and our two closest friends
and maybe even their two closest friends
But when the waves beat down
beyond the shore
barrels of teeth reaching further and further
We could be in trouble then
but also maybe not
Maybe we could swim and swim
shore to retreating shore, shore to
broken shore
And find somewhere perfect and safe and great
to live out the rest of our
dark wet lives

Billions on trips to Mars,
where Rover analyzes
the surface of a planet
where lungs cannot breathe
and food cannot grow

While the thin sliver of arable
Earth that has fed
every land-living being
since our epoch dawned
remains mostly

dark uncharted territory
an economic externality
a line on some spreadsheet
another square mile of breadbasket
paved for a data center.

It’s simple.
This love is bigger than these systems
More sacred than colonialism ever taught you
More powerful than they want you
to believe. This sun rising is older
than the chains. And if you know
this, you are untouchable.

In my youth, I met an artist
whose name fell from my mouth 
like a mussel 
suckered to the roof of it.
He wants me in the 
suburban badlands of the south,
with an apron squeezing the rolls of my waist.
He is dying to salvage something he never had. 
I am but a babydoll;
We are playing house. 
He wants me in sundresses
and in rooms coated in canary yellow wallpaper.
He wants the kind of life that would drive
a woman like myself mad.

crazy lace transplant
gobstopper among gumballs
onion or camas

In history we learned that wars consist
Of battles one after the other
A trail of bloodshed in one line
Leading to someone’s victory

But the war for a soul
A person’s or an entire nation’s
Is a series of battles not successive
But simultaneous

Every voice tells their own tale
And pulls the soul toward it
A mighty tug-of-war
In a thousand directions

But what if we could recognize
That not every voice apart from ours
Is an enemy–instead an ally
Merely fighting a different battle for the same side?

And only by that recognition
Can we pull all our ropes tight in one direction
Coordinate our battles into one strategy
And win.

The night after my great aunt Jenny’s death,

I dreamt of my grandmother’s house

and signs that Aunt Jenny was there

including gifts she had brought to my grandmother,

a sign that the two sisters were reunited.

My grandfather picked up my check at a restaurant

and stayed to visit.

He and my friends encouraged me to tell them an old folktale.

My grandfather’s best friend Frankie

appeared to me the night after his funeral.

He drove a bus on which I was the only passenger,

letting me off at my destination,

a final father-like kindness.

I got to tell him how much I loved him.

My grandmother was seated next to me

in a theater.

I was in full-on girl mode.

I realized upon waking up

how her silence

was a kind of simple acceptance.

My dress was not a cause for conflict or concern.

All these ethereal gifts.

Hints and echoes of love.

Whispers of affection

that lives on.

The prophet practiced neutrality as not to offend
Deliberate fence post ballet
arabesque, plié and parry
and he blended into the crowd
incognito and invisible

What he knew could only confuse the multitudes
multitudes content with TikTok or some small-screen distractions
multitudes content with the score of the game and participation as a passive spectator wearing a shirt or hat to proclaim we are alike and belong to this group or that
and the altar became a stage pleading for a new jet

The prophet practiced silent desperation
saying nothing at all
saying little to encourage thought
doing little to help or harm
amusing himself with the ability to not interfere again