Shout

I think when you try to extrapolate all that you think, and all that you are
it can sometimes get a little messier than it ever was in the first place, before you ever let the things that you feel
escape your lips. 

I think that there is 
power in speech 
and I also believe that many 
powerful things can never be spoken.
I believe in the power of what is seen and I believe 
even more fully in the things that we cannot see.
I myself am aware of the 
dividing line that is between the 
black and the white
and I also see those around me drowning in the abyss of all that it is gray.
So definite, so severe, and so messy.
That is why I don’t find the process of things and words and feelings 
out loud 
to always be the solution.
I believe there are things that our souls scream that only 
the Lord can hear.

I know this because I have this bluebird in my chest 
that I’ve heard of once before in the words of a poet I adore, and he sings sometimes when I don’t want him to. 
I do what I can-all that I can to shut his beak-even though 
the sound he makes is the truth that I cannot speak.
In summary it is simply this swelling song of sorrow. 

My friend told me once before about heart ache and heartbreak and the difference.
“Heart break” he said, with me one night “is something that was truly hurtful and 
that just shouldn’t have ended 
the way it did.”
That sad little bird that sings in me where my heart should be 
silently agrees and I say nothing with his arm around me.
“A heartache” he says, as though he’s thought it through and knows it well, explaining calmly and peacefully; “it hurts but it’s something that is easier to 
move on in like 
brush your shoulders off so to say.”
Regretfully, I can quietly pinpoint which of these has affected me 
and I say nothing of it because if I were to find the words that little bird, so very blue, inside my chest 
would make me feel just that way and whatever I meant to say would leave my lips and fall in drips from my eyes.

I think that saying helps but praying is the cure. 
I think the Lord knows 
this brokenness 
better than anyone.
I know the Lord
loves the sparrows and I believe He cares for
my bluebird too.
So that’s what I’ll continue to say, instead of trying to 
shout over the singing 
and drowned him in the drinking 
I will tell him, that noisy little bird, 
that the Lord hears his song and I don’t have to care because He does.
And so, I suppose the next time this little bird sings it won’t be me covering my ears.
Instead I will tell him  
who he belongs to. “John” I will say, “the song of sorrow  
is not yours any more. 
Look in chapter 14 and 
sing something new.”