Midnight

When I walk through the door

Without you

This place no longer feels like home.

I sink listlessly, lost in a haze

Drowning but too feeble to fight for the surface.

Nothing is right.

My world has been tainted

With a stagnant, foggy darkness.

Sounds of laughter arouse a bitter taste.

How much longer will this last?

How many more long lonely nights?

Everywhere I walk, I carry scars

I don’t think I will ever be the same

But maybe I don’t want to.

Maybe I’m content with wallowing in the night

With bathing in my tears

Wishing someone would care

But also strangely wishing to be left alone.

Where are you?

My life bears a gaping hole that once belonged to you

That will never, can never be filled.

I flail and claw onto memories as I sink deeper

But that is all they are—

Memories.

Memories will not bring you back

No matter how earnestly I envision them.

They will change form like smoke

Until they create an illusion of someone you were not,

Then dissipate aimlessly into oblivion.

I think you would like these flowers they bring you

Something beautiful in a time that is not

But even they will fade in a few days’ time.

Our special phrases, the particular pitch of voice I would use

Lie desolate and buried in my throat.

I don’t want to forget

But they no longer have a reason for release.

Sometimes I call out to you, hoping somehow

Up above,

You can hear my voice.

I hope you see how I spend my days

So I can carry you with me

But my heart throbs with the longing to speak to you,

To embrace you once again…

I would have done it more back then

If only I knew.

Now, I am a prisoner in a cavernous cage,

Alone in the liveliest crowds of people.

I don’t know where my place is anymore,

How I’m supposed to behave.

I am ashamed of becoming a burden

So should I contort myself into expected normalcy?

God, how can this be?

I thought you answered prayers

I thought you honored hope

I thought you took good care of your children.

I want to trust you again, but how can I?

My heart feels strangely distant

This chasm so hard to breach.

It doesn’t make any sense

Yet I can’t bring myself to curse you.

Deep down I know you are good

But why are you good, when I struggle to see it?

Is this faith,

Something that feels so much like folly?

In the middle of the night

When weeping stains my face and heart

A small whisper emerges from within:

“Why are you cast down, O my soul?” ¹

And as I stumble along these roads I never thought I would endure

I find that Your hands were beneath my every step.

I confined You to a box of my perception

Groaning, “Where were you?”

“Why did you not do this?”

When Your plans extended far beyond anything I could fathom.

You were present in that hospital room

In the borrowed time

In every sung and spoken word

In the hope held onto

In every corner and crevasse

Of the deepest and darkest nights

Sitting silently with me,

Holding me fast.

Your Word reminds my wounded heart

That living hope is found in the morning to come

In the sun that shines with constant glory, even at night.

So I will wait for the dawn You promise

And teach my soul to sing again

That Your steadfast love endures forever

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” - John 1:5

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