Never Ashamed

Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.

Shame is a powerful thing. A hurting thing. Especially when you haven't done anything wrong. When folks are supposed to love you, cover you and they don't. Can't.

It's the dirt that soils the bright garments of virgins, the gall in the cups of old men, the whisper on the lips of old women, the venom of the accuser.

"Has God truly said? To YOU? I mean, come on. . ." This thing, it doesn't even bother to hiss, but speaks clearly. Articulate. Bold.

He's baiting me, as always, but I don't have time today. I have work to do, love to give. I sigh, thankful that there is One who holds court for me at all hours. For all times. I turn to Him, tired, drop to my knees. "There's someone here to see You."

He moves toward me, this Brightness. Though I can't see His face, the light bends. Like a smile. Thunder cushions his feet. Lightning dances from fingertips. The prosecutor's scales push through his skin. "You have forgotten who you are. What you've done. . ." He pauses. This is usually where I start to fight, to defend myself.

Not today.

Today, I look up, up, and up some more. Up at my sustenance, my Life. He is sweet to me now. Too sweet for me to spare a breath of His praise, His worship on Leviathan.

The light bends, refracts, explodes into a sea of stars, pinpricks of light. Light that melts down my skin, washes me. The light of my darkness. The sea of my tears.

The Light speaks. "I knew about that, but I chose to forget." Light shifts my way, caresses my toes. "You should forget too, daughter of light. Go forth, and do not be ashamed."

The worm knows the outcome, but looks to the Judge anyway, beady eyes narrowed.

The verdict is like music. "Not guilty."

A moon-ribbon, slim yet delicious, settles around my shoulders, now slack with sweet relief. At my feet is a film, thin like egg whites, the beginnings of a death mask long since shed.

The mask of shame.

And there's a poem. And old one, 2000 or so, I think.

Tamar’s Flight

I was ultraviolet, radiating the brilliance of winter's first snow, inviolate and unprofaned. Then leviathan swept me from the heavens, spilling my sunshine onto unwashed lineoleum.

Aspiring to save at least the moon-juice, warmed by a thousand suns and poured into the prism between my diamond eyes, I struggled to shine. Alas, it was too late. I was opaque now and fading fast.

Plummeting, I tried to lick a rainbow from the bottom of his shoe, but he laughed, swallowed it whole. I saw a star stuck between his teeth. I leapt for it to the crescendo of shadows as he drank the dregs of my bright-eyed childhood.

He slinked away, leaving the dirge of shame churning in my ears. I tried to smother it with my virtue, shredded and impotent, but the charcoal sieved through it, staining every cell.

I crawled back to my room screaming. Go back to sleep they said. I dried my eyes and tried to scrape the night, funky and thick, from between my toes.

Eventually, I forgot my blaze and danced after midnight for fire crackers and holy water. Sometimes I saw a burning man beside me, whispering my old name.

One night He caught me exposed. Dying. He offered a hunk of flesh and a shot of blood. Incredulous and desperate, I took and ate.

To my surprise, beams of light, fat and ridiculous, shot from my face igniting into a sunrise. A mask of sooty madness crashed in seven-eighths time at my feet.

I fly now in daytime, spectrum magnificent, looking for little girls in three-pieced suits with black-stained mouths they try to scrub when no one is looking.