I have never known the language of gods/religion/God,
although I have traced my name into the dust of holy ground,
felt the weight of the unseen settle on my skin
like a whisper I could and could not trust.
But I have watched the sea,
how it calls the shore forward,
pulls it back,
kneels at its feet only to abandon it again—
a reverence, a betrayal, a rhythm.
They say faith is water in the desert,
a wellspring for the parched,
but thirst is the great deceiver,
and mirages are made of longing, not light.
To believe is to close one's eyes,
to walk into the dark and name it home,
to stretch fingers into the unknown
and swear it is a hand reaching back.
And yet, to refuse—
to demand the comfort of what can be held,
to build walls against the flood of feeling,
to fear the unseen for its refusal to kneel—
is its own kind of blindness.
A sword glimmers in the mind of the believer,
one edge cuts doubt to ribbons,
the other slices clean through reason.
The hilt is warm, carved with the promise of certainty,
and yet, how many hands have bled from holding on?
The heart is an altar to the unseen,
but hearts have been wrong before.
And still, the waves return to the shore,
still, the weary drink from the well,
still, the dark swallows the faithful whole,
and they call it home.
