How to Breathe You

Holy
Holy
Holiest of whole-ness,
Adonai, are you here?
I feel terrified,
betrayed,
lost.
Are you bored, overwhelmed,
is this virus not your creation?
Are you needed elsewhere? Stretched impossibly thin?
Need some time off?
I used to know you – now I know nothing.

Sometimes holiness is a joke, sometimes a fairy tale.
Sometimes I can think my way to feeling something.
If I loosen my grip, my
heart trembles, and I feel it crack,
something pushing to get inside.

But now –
now
for a minute, a second, I feel your presence near me
then you flit away, and I am grasping at air,
thrown around by this terrifying world
buffeted, banging into walls
grasping, gasping.

So now what?
Do you care?
Are you lost,
exhausted, like we are? Like I am?
Stumbling, falling, terrified?

I will breathe. 
I will breathe in whatever terrifying droplets are in the air. 
I will breathe you into me, I will breathe out a song,
I will breathe out a prayer to wrap around us all.
I can breathe you into me.
I will try to remember how to breathe in, and breathe out;
how to breathe you into me, breathe out a song
Stretch it long enough, big enough, far enough to hold us up. 
I open my eyes, my heart stops pounding,
I hold out my arms, open my hands.
For a second a minute an hour a day
Adonai, I praise you, I see you, I feel you. 

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