Shot

Here it is again

Your going

Ginormous spans of time and distance

Echo in the gap between us

How is it

I am not mad with grief and fear?

It’s because I was shot

The last time you left on a jet plane

I was shot to the heart

The meds

Your arrival, your joy, your return

They still run through me

Like the waterfall you stood under

Eternal it seemed

Did you hear it?

Over the age old rush

Of hydrogen, oxygen, and gravity?

“This is my daughter.

Whom I love

With her I am well pleased.”

I did

Hear it

Something different

But still

“You there.

You are a modern day Mary.

You bore her, raised her, and when the time was fulfilled

You balanced her life and your punctured heart

In your trembling mama hands

Dripping with tears, not blood

You offered her as a live sacrifice

To me, to the world

Blessed are the hands that are open, not clenched

Palms without fingernail-shaped wounds

Extended

Freely, faithfully.”

The symptoms

The what ifs and will I ever

(Inhale her Pantene twirls again)

Didn’t present until 24 hours out this time

Burning eye syndrome, leaky gutter nose, shovel scrapes in the belly

They’ve only just now come

To be honest, on the pain scale, they’re a scant three or four

And then, only if I shut out everything else

Drill down

Attend the guttural jeer of she’s leaving you

For another mother

A different family

I flip my hair and anxiety, albeit lesser,

Behind me

Where I can’t see it

I almost yell at the mirror

You’re shot, remember?

Vaccinated

It can’t hurt you

The unblessed absence of assurance

Faith exists only in the invisible

Sight and knowing?

Where is the thrill, the miracle, the mountain top, in that?

I trust

I have to

But at least I can 

‘Cause I’ve been shot

Inoculated

One bout with loss, fear, and the unknown

(Then reunion and recovery)

Left me so much stronger

Able, if not ready

(And really, when will I ever be ready?)

To do it all again