Fireflies and Fever-Bloom

4/9/23

A corrected post from the earlier send. Thank you!

Once upon a moon

We had no explanation for fireflies.

Their suspended luminosity staggered in the dusky-dark as beacons to a distant path

always one more…

just over there.

I believed they were real before someone told me

that a certain chemical reaction explained them away.

For awhile I bought the lie that they were less than I had perceived.

I believed Jesus died in a hyssop stupor on his own, finding rest in the dirt's kindness as metallic tributaries streamed from his head to the corners of his eyes and licorice bile filled his throat and lungs. And that his love healed his body and every corner of creation connected to his molecules like a greening fever-bloom.

I trusted he went cold, traveled below the surface and felt the shame of the world that had done so much harm, returned to his body with the sunrise, stood solid and reached for Mary and the others with his wounded hands… but didn't stay long, lest it become about him.

I believed it was real before people tried to say it was impossible.

Someday they will explain the physics of love.

And it won't change the wonder of a gaze that searches your soul with no agenda, no fear, and is willing to see all of you unfold. For as long as you might ever want to be seen.

Again and again and again.