…my mouth is a common prophet, knocking on God’s back door, asking for water…

liezel graham

everything is ok, everything is ok, and i am shaping a prayer out of the thinnest air, out of the atoms that bind me to the places where my bones grew to fit my skin and my skin stretched to fit my bones, and isn’t it all a wild miracle how we are still here, and there have been a few once-upon-a-time times that had much sharper edges, and so i know that i can do this, and i have been given other lives that saw me stunned at what-i-did-not-see-coming and it is so easy to slip fear over my shoulders, it fits me so well, and if you were here with me as i write this, i would lean over and whisper into your ear, tell you the names of the things that find me when i am not drinking tea, or making lunch, or taking a boy-child to the dentist, and how they follow me on their clay feet, how they move so fast holding their chains, how they chinkle-chankle when i turn to look at them, and today when i stopped by the water, the loch dressed in olive green, and the swans and how they kept one baby alive, only one, there are always foxes about don’t you know, other mothers with babies whose bellies need feeding, but somehow one survived, and isn’t it a wild miracle how things keep on living, and how they sat down, the things-that-remind-me-of-what-i-should fear and what-might-still-happen, swinging their hairy legs in the watery winter sunshine, waiting to see what i would do, waiting to see if my hands would waterlilly themselves into the soft shape that says ‘please and thank you’, the way that i told my eyes to look for the light and nothing else, my mouth a common prophet knocking on God’s back door to ask for water, even as i wait for the wine to find your cup.

© Liezel Graham 2022.

{📷 kilmardinny loch}

words about things that need water turned into wine and knowing that the back door is always open, no matter what.