Sonship

Baby, here in the waning light
I can feel you breathe.
I can feel the feeling of your teardrops stopping when they touch me.
Don’t even realize it’s just in my mind.
When you give me compliments,
I feel more myself.
If I can be enough for you,
Maybe I won’t feel unworthy.

But I still curl up, when you leave, staring at the ceiling wondering what all your words actually mean.
I’m not strong.
And I still feel alone,
Even though you were right here just yesterday.
I know we’re both so broken—
Falling, flattered fragments.
So unfocused.
Breaking, battered bits of black and blue.
The broken can’t heal each other.

I’m screaming.
How can I be a leader,
If I am not first led.
I just follow the bleating lambs.
Who can end these conversations in my head?
How can I point to the Savior if I don’t know that I’m saved.
My hands slipping from this rope, bleeding.

It’s all in my heart, soul.
Not just how I behave.
Change myself so I don’t only crave me.
I guess I’m only in the grave, see.
Need your resurrection power.
Life—flooding through my veins.
Not some irrelational dope. It’s you holding me in your hands.

She will drop me; lose her hold.
But these hands won’t.
When I blow it, you keep waiting and you blow me
Away.
Father, be my father so I can be your son.
And know I’m not the only one.

I tried to fill the void.
Tried to cram my sister in the middle of my soul.
Tried to pour my pain to my brothers.
They taste the sweat in the ripped pages of my soul and try to still it.
But they only pour more fire.
We can’t heal each other.

You bind me.
You find me.
Like a bird hovering over deserts.
Come down. Carry me away from loneliness.
From myself.
Unbind me.
Unblind me.
My head knocked against your chest, somehow comforted.
Home.

Teach me respect, sonship.
Your hand on my shoulder. Eyes locked. Knighted.
Like my gender’s more than my body
Or mistaken stereotypes.
More than attractions. Hormones—out of the corner of my eye.
You don’t change. You are the potter. All others broken reeds.
You’re forming me—holistically holy.
Holistically me.

I’m pleading to be a son.
Because you call me to be a son.
I was created for you.
But in so many ways I still don’t get it.
Help me get it.
That you’re different—not just another one.
You’re everything. You’re reaching me through them.

Dear Lord, the one thing left to say is forgive me.
Forgive me for looking everywhere but you.
For trying to be saved, but not looking to the Savior.
And rejecting your blood.
All in the name of love.
I’m sorry!