What do I do with the desert?

In liminal spaces

between fire

and air

is a river, 

and I’ll be there every day

throughout this long and varied present. 

When every day 

I reach breaking points, 

I feel myself shatter in the rivers. 

The water transforms my body into prisms of light. 

A rainbow on a drying riverbed. 

What do I do with the desert, 

where there is nowhere to hide? 

Succulents watch as I drift 

away like flower petals to root 

in gardens that will actually

hold me. 

Sometimes

there are 

fire lit candles from homes

shining through golden pains

of tempered glass.  

Soft voices murmur and 

glasses clink, when it gently rains down on me.
I hear singing cello tones from my past lives. 

I don’t know

whether I am the singing soil

or 

the seed in waiting but

you are water —

the water in the river bed,

and the water that rains down on me now. 

At least

I see now

that a seed

is not expected

to grow without water.

When I thought I was failing, 

I was only meant to be in waiting.

I don’t really know what grace is,

but maybe it is a seed—

finally

feeling

the soft

rain.