I’m Desperate for a Breakthrough

Hi friends! For those who are here for life updates, check out last week’s post about my move from NYC to Vancouver for grad school. More reflections on that coming. For those who are here for poetry, you’re in luck this week.

I’m desperate for a breakthrough.
Where’s my story of jubilee?
I’m not content with the victories of the past because if there’s anything about being human—
It’s that we always need more.
It’s that pain and shame burrow like ticks deep under our skin
While healing and forgiveness seem to slick off like oil.
I want to weep and weep and weep but when
Opportunities come, I turn up my collar
And breathe myself into acceptance.
But the tears wait. They are patient.
There is a well of them somewhere behind my stomach
And the bill always comes due, sooner or later:
Time to lower the bucket. Time to drink deep.
But I’m desperate, desperate to be told to throw a stick
Into this bitter underground pool and be surprised
By sweetness.
I’ve been surprised by joy before. I have.
I cling to the mantra: There will be surprises.
But I have a suspicion my belief is nestled around a nucleus
Of fear. That I don’t really believe
All the pretty things I say, all the quotes that make me tear up,
All the spun words I repost.
I’m desperate to believe.
I tell my friends: I want to do this well.
If I got everything I wanted tomorrow, how would I have wanted to live today?
Also I want to cry. I want to roll up on the couch in expansive blankets.
Where are the arms I always dream of, holding me?
Hold me now, till the fear is leaving …
All those edgy songs from high school come back,
And I know I’ve never really gotten over it,
The longing. The fragility. The standing with a hand still on the threshold
Of the door to life, looking out and feeling my insufficiency
And also the inevitably of being thrust out into it.
Some days I feel the miracle of it.
Some days all I want is to be carried.
I think that I should feel you more.
I feel that I should let myself cry.
I cry because I think that there is only one way I can be happy.
For nothing counts for anything, except a new creation.
How to be new? How to be new?
How to be new?
I’m desperate for a breakthrough.
A violent word that, breakthrough. Better:
I’m desperate for your tenderness. 

A little behind-the-scenes: Originally this was one long mega-stanza, basically a journal entry in poem form. But as I copied and pasted it onto here and reread it, the “I’ve been surprised by joy before” line stood out to me. So I decided to play with it and make it its own stanza, and then I kept hunting for other lines that could be treated the same. I didn’t necessarily need there to be others but I wasn’t sure the joy line could handle the weight of being the only standalone. And then I found “Some days I feel the miracle of it,” and it fit; it was the right distance into the poem and had the same one-liner quality.

As I stepped back to look at the revised poem, I realized the two standalone lines are hopeful ones—they are truth actually breaking into the stream-of-consciousness fears and doubts. They’re the still, small voice amidst the thunder. They’re the ray of light outrunning the clouds.

If you’ve ever had an anxiety episode, you know how that can feel, the fleeting moments when you grasp hold of a truth that relieves the weight for a moment, the brief pause of the hamster wheel of rumination. Some days I’m better at dwelling in the truth, letting it be the soundtrack to my moments. Some days are harder, and the pauses are all I get. But they’re worth their own lines.

It’s fun when a poem begging to be surprised surprises you.

Quotes: … throw a stick into this underground pool and be surprised by sweetness | Hold me now till the fear is leaving | For nothing counts for anything, except a new creation

In Other Words…

No new reviews this week—no new books completed at all. But I’ve got various health insurances applied for and paid for, an official letter from the government of Canada that took its sweet time in coming, the Hebrew alphabet memorized, a church settled on, and other life things in the works, so I’m setting all that on the scales against my slowing reading and creative life and reminding myself that this is a season I’ve prayed for. I wrote this poem when there was a good a chance that my visa to move wouldn’t come through. And now look. My classes start tomorrow (!!) and I’m excited. And I’m bracing myself. But I’m mostly just excited. Let’s do this thing!

May all your falls be starting with intentionality and also with grace, whether this season finds you like a live wire sparking with excitement and potential … or like the extended version of a long episode you wish would be over. Here’s to the fierce tenderness of God’s breakthroughs.

to staying awake—

Aberdeen