20 years

Before you knew I was coming, you were preparing a place for me, for this second-born with her feet in the ocean and her head in the dirt.

My mother knew I was coming, felt me stirring inside of her, torturing her before I'd even taken a breath. Later on she would buy me women's clothes, trying to tempt me back to Christian sanity with promises of a new wardrobe. I remember standing in front of her in my bedroom in my boy's pants and undershirt, I remember both of our hearts breaking at the same moment as she saw who I was and I saw what she hated.

"Girls don't hug other girls like that," she whispered one day, afraid that the walls would report this indiscretion to my father.
"Like what?" I asked, my face heating up.
"Like that. They just don't," she said.

Years later, I told her that I'd fallen in love. I thought she already knew, that she'd understood from stories and poems I'd written in the year before, that this person I'd been running to visit at every moment was more then a pen pal or a roommate.
"What have we done wrong?" she asked, weeping over her appetizer.
"Nothing. There's nothing wrong with me," I said.
She was silent.
"There isn't," I insisted.
She dabbed her eye.
"Is there?" I asked.

Before you knew I was coming, you said no. "No," you said, "there is nothing wrong with what you wear, who you love, who you are." And for this, I am grateful. It is a hard thing after all, to be wrong just by being.

Deliver Us

As I was leaving Egypt, I bound myself to you. I threw you a net and asked you to walk with me, to hold my hand as we crossed the sea on dry land. My faith wobbled, the walls closed in, but I held to the rope and said myself, "I am not alone." And to you I said, "Tell me to believe and I will."

I guess maybe I held too hard, walked too slow, took too long. And when the walls fell around me, when the sea came back in, I pulled on the rope and it came to me. You were not on the other end. Maybe you never were. I stayed at the bottom like the chariots as you shook your head from the shore. You would not walk with me anymore; it was better for you to be on the shore, than it was to be at the bottom with me.

Who can blame you? You were only bound by a thread, I by a net. I always knew it would end this way, even when you promised to be there for my deliverance. I wonder if you thought you could deliver, if you thought you were the one chosen to lead me out of Egypt. You had a way of preaching at me, of being the one who decided how close the ropes would bring us.

And you head out into the desert, sure of yourself that you have paid for your sins and that you have done all you can. More than you had to, for sure. When I call to you in panic from the bottom of the sea, you say I'm only trying to drag you in with me and so you cast off the rope and build an altar to the Lord. I'm sure you still pray for me- you had a way of being an intercessor.

"Deliver me!" I cry to Him. "I took too long crossing the sea and the walls have closed back in. My friends have left me alone!" Does the Lord hear voices from the depths like He hears ones from the high altars? God, I hope so. God, I hope there is more than one blessing, that there is one left for a child who got trapped in her net and is now afraid of both drowning and breathing alike.

"I'm here like before," I cry out to the Lord, "but now I'm alone, bound by a rope that's tied to the darkness of the sea." Are there other children waiting for me by the shore, or have they all gone out into the desert together?

I feel around at the bottom for others like me, for the Undelivered who haven't made it across. But we're good at hiding, keeping to ourselves, clutching our nets tight against us. We'd rather be hanged by the ropes then be here at the bottom, empty-handed.

"Deliver us!" I cry out to the Lord, again and again as I make my way through the darkness. Without a rope to follow I have no idea if I'm heading towards the desert or back into bondage in Egypt.