Dreams unwished

I pressed my nose against your fluff

careful not to breathe in or disturb

the thousand points of white

hope

a dream for each one

Six years old in a field of wishes

hopes and dreams

innocent

thinking someday

they'd all come true

So I blew and blew

cascade of joy in tiny spears

whirling in a child's breath

toward a new life

and a thousand

new yellow babies

And now I leave the spears in place

the seeds unsown

because dreams rarely come true

it's a waste of breath to blow

and you're beautiful

just the way you are

and I am trying

to be beautiful too

just where I've been planted.

Mother prayers

You who have been safe your whole life, you children yet to meet the evil of this world, you're sassy and free. I am learning what a child of 7, 8, 9 is like without scars. You believe in those big hands of Grandpa's - they would protect you, they would threaten anyone who threatened you.

You don't know that evil is insidious. It comes dressed in friend's clothing, it comes in the shape of your heroes, it comes along with love and it comes along with joy. It is a silent companion, a shadow like a panther creeping closer when those big hands aren't around to protect you.

You dream when you are alone. I don't know what dreams fill your little head, but I know they aren't nightmares. I know your nightmares, and they aren't of people you love turning evil, or of being awoken in the night by a terrible face that used to show only love. Your nightmares are amorphous - lightening storms and monsters. But when you wake, I can comfort you. You haven't wet the bed in fear. You don't hide your nightmares from me, afraid I'll discover the truth.

And maybe life can be as simple as growing up and falling in love and living with joy. It is the hope of mothers everywhere - that their children have a happy life. Do some mothers dream of their children having a childhood just like theirs? I pray you have the joy of siblings, the love of parents, the wings for your dreams - but not the torment and the secrets and the caustic burn of wrongdoing in the night that feels as though it somehow leaked through the innocence of your own little soul.

I pray that when someone says they love you, they really do. I pray that when someone says they'll always be there for you, they will be there. I pray you never face a turncoat or a frenemy or a two-faced liar. I hope you never discover one of those amongst your friends. I pray you keep your innocence, that the world doesn't rip it from you with the truth that evil is here along with good. I hope you can watch from the sidelines when pain is afoot. I pray you are His, and hedged about, and free and believing and gullible and naïve.

Be the shining face that believes in the power of good. Be the innocent soul that encourages and gathers groups to carry out your big dreams. Be the kind voice that speaks of Christ's love, unadulterated by the knowledge of exactly what His love has saved us from.

Be that kind of person.

Don't be me.

Newtown Survivors: Looking into Paintings

I remember being little

invincible

as though youth were sword and shield

a hedge against evil

and what shattered innocence

like china against concrete

for me didn't take my life

it was like a slow gain in acuity

vision going from Matisse to Vermeer

details of loveliness gaining on me

but I could also see into shadows

and i began to run from darkness

instead of sleeping

still

under the velvet black

of night

they will be so, i think,

when they go back to school

i wonder what their parents see in their eyes today

shattered china

or is it re-firing to survive

turning into jade

jaded pupils

opalescent

against the harshness

of new reality

and was this Eve?

when the juice ran down her throat

and Adam standing there watching her change

mother and father of our whole race

did their world fracture

like Picasso's

into a senseless collection of shapes

when innocence was lost

and knowledge gained

at such a price?

Paintings courtesy of wikipedia.com

Claude Monet's Woman with a Parasol (1875)

Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665)

Picasso's Three Dancers (1925)