Not Allowed In

You were so preoccupied with what you thought you had to keep out
you didn't see all the beauty you weren't letting in.

Human beings put fences
where God plants sprawling, flower-filled meadows.

You were too afraid to err on the side of inclusion
because you didn't want to offend the sensibilities of the self-declared orthodox.
So we received lip service
and they received power to draw the lines in the sand.

Here we are,
on the other side
cut out, excluded
but told, "You're welcome here,
and I understand your concerns
just understand that these people are wounded
and they need this place to be conservative
because the risks of being too conservative are less than of being liberal
and we can't rock that boat."

Never mind that people like me had been wounded by the arrows you were helping them forge.

In our quiet talks you
pitted their hurt, their stories,
against mine
as more worth protecting, more worth believing.

In enabling them, you lost me.

It's not that their hurts weren't real
it's just that you didn't want to publicly affirm
that mine were too.

"It's not enough to tell me that you care

When we both know your words are empty air." 

-Florence Welch

"You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."

-Anne Lamott

Stuart Harlan Cone

Yours is the name I want to speak to this dark night of one-thousand regrets
In hopes that with it's utterance you would break forth incarnate
made from the milky threads of distant galaxies and the dust of millions of stars,

Forming into the one person
whose loss has left us with an
empty, black sky.

I speak your name with reverence and trepidation
like holy words from an ancient prayer
but you do not appear.

And yet this longing won't go away.
The agony hope won't go away.