Holy Driftwood
written by: Maria Chalastani
I met her at the market square,
her eyes were dark and hollow.
She said she had just broken free;
her speech was hard to follow.
From what she’d fled I couldn’t say,
though I noticed all the string scars.
But she was brave enough to share
she used to live behind bars.
Of all the stalls she stopped at that
of a skillful wing-maker.
Her hollow gaze absorbed each move;
his art began to wake her.
A strange encounter though it was,
it struck me when we parted.
A living puppet I had met—
fearless and lionhearted.
The puppeteer would keep her caged,
deemed faulty, flawed, and no-good.
Repairmen did the best they could,
but she was carved from driftwood.
Driftwood cut off from heaven’s door
and washed down in the gutter,
where all true saints have been baptized
and silence floods the clutter.
And then I saw her once again—
a transformed, restored creature—
as softness was for once revealed
in each and every feature.
She’d grown two wings upon her back
that only I could see through.
She told me I had mended her;
my witness was the true glue.
A long-forgotten time ago,
saints gathered in a gutter
and laid a spell upon a bough
in words I dare not utter.
And as their words flew heaven-high,
where all our sins are driven,
they bid a bittersweet farewell:
“ask and you shall be given.”
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