100th:

Poem 100: The Offering

0505.2025

❀༺༻❀

Don’t laugh—

I see love in every pair of eyes,

even the hardest punk hides

a soft smile behind the bruise.

The rain hasn’t stopped for three days.

Where it ends and my tears begin, I don’t know.

And still—

I smile for strangers.

I smile for the silence.

Let us all smile at one another,

even as our hearts break like fruit.

Let us offer our hands,

not in triumph,

but in good faith and fellowship—

because it is right.

Because it is good.

Because mercy is a melody,

and love may be the last good thing.

I do not want to give myself to apathy.

I want to take the light in my skin,

the sun from my mouth,

the moon from my eyes,

the stars caught in my hair—

and hold them out like lanterns

so others might see what I see,

feel what I feel.

If I could re-root the weary,

guide back the ones

who trusted the wrong gods—

I would.

But alas,

I am a dying breed—

a dryad in a city of fire,

a fairy in a falling forest.

I am one of the last

who still remembers

my mother

and father.

Did we not wake aching today?

Did we not wake alone?

Then take what I have.

My hand.

My smile.

My time.

My body.

Let me help balance what you cannot.

I ask for nothing

but to be made whole

through the love

I try to give.

✾❁✾

m.c.f.