For the Children I Will Never Know

Sit with me, I ask.

Hold that silence and tension.

Feel it expand and contract—

the fissure of soul when self is sundered.

I am in the ache now, Beloved,

sitting in ashes as mourning

for the children I will never know.

Gathering the strands of stillborns,

clutching them to my breast,

feeling the silence of their rest.

Sharing in what could never be—

the spark snuffed before begun.

For the wailing widow and grieving grandpa,

it becomes a storm of empathic resonance,

where my lonely longing joins the greater grief,

that river of time where loss is stored

as liquified despair.

In that shared grief,

the heart shrivels like a dried husk,

ready for a match to strike

the tinder of emotional devastation.

Ready ground prepared,

for the Holy Spirit’s spark,

and what became—

our flame.

The end result of my sorrow

is beauty crafted as revelation.

So what can I say as Dust,

but praise the Name as I must.