Be welcome.

Grace is a place I’ve come to inhabit
at the edges of my own ruinous heart
where life flourishes, as it does in every bramble,
these joins between the worlds
where the fruit is tart and the thorns feel sweet.
When the long night, sharp against my throat,
steals my breath
and I do not know how to forgive myself for being,
it is the choice I make
to stumble through becoming, torn as I may be by the cost.
Here, a quiet kindness falls down my cheeks,
prayer kindled in the marrow of my bones
by our return to this, my Beloveds, a gift for a gift
calling us home.