He sits alone
on the steps, a little boy
guilty only of being born,
listening for a footstep
no longer lurching, for a tongue
no longer burning,
for the key to turn, for warmth
to reach out, but
only dark comes to answer, dark
that a thousand candles can’t pierce
and while he waits he is weaving
a house to hold him, a house
of sticks and stones, words
born in bone.
Oh let there be light.
She stands alone
in the night, a woman
listening for a song lost,
a song
that lies fallen at her feet, her voice
once vibrant now silent, taken
by a man feigning love, his words
piercing steel-edged
where angels fear to tread,
she hides hope
with a smile but
a thousand cuts too small to see
will empty sacred wells
eventually.
Oh let there be light.
And there was light.
Not that glow we call light,
heaven-descending,
healing and rescuing in fantasy endings,
no, not that light, but
Light
that holds hands with darkness,
Story-light
limping from lips human,
from pages of tree-skin,
Light brushed
onto canvas in ink of tears
and paint of blood,
Light
transmuting into lyrics and chords,
Light
wrung from the earth
in hands who have been there before.
In the alone, in the void,
when darkness covers the face of the world,
it is a voice
that parts the dark waters.
And there
is light.
-s. rochelle
