Just a little story I like to tell myself...

Once there was a girl who stood, toes curled
above the highest sun-drenched cliff, on the edge
of all she had known before. Her heart leapt to see
plains and river valley, white mountains and a glorious future
ahead. And she was happy
to have come so far. A gentle smile broke forth
and lit her face as the winds blew through her golden hair
like fingers stretching from the very hand of love.
She laughed at the sun, which shone brighter than
her wildest imaginings of it. Filled
with warmth and a gratitude that spilled
out onto everyone who came into her path,
she spread her arms in praise, and certain grace
changed them into wings which carried her
into the West.

Eventually, her long journey brought her
to the fair people who had lived in the Land of Promise
all their fortunate lives. She had awaited this reunion,
anticipated a celebration of the miracle that had allowed it.
But they circled round her
like hungry vultures. She shared her food, morsels of wisdom,
spiritual nourishment she'd gathered along the way.
They scoffed at her, enraged by her audacity, angered
by what they saw as her impurity, a questionable heritage
and her brash belief
that truth-telling and soul talk belonged in this,
their sacred land of faith. Only then did she realize
that their thirst for her blood would not be quenched by communion.
And so it was that those she called friends, that family
whose love she had longed
to know all the days of her life, attacked her
without mercy and for what seemed like no reason at all.
They ridiculed, reprimanded and renounced her for who
she was, for who they said she only pretended to be.
And she lay dying.

Reduced to a pile of feathers, ashes scattered to the wind,
the girl who thought she could fly, wondered if she were dead.
Through desert days of unrelenting heat and nights spent shivering,
hungry, thirsty, motionless, alone, she wondered if it were
only a dream. She wished
for a time she had never seen the land beyond, had never
believed that grace would carry her, had never had
such innocence in her heart. Her tears of grief stung
the exposed places. She wondered why she survived
if only to waste away, forgotten,
in a forsaken place where vultures did not even bother
to scour for an easy kill. She hardly recognized herself
on the outside and felt nothing but dead on the inside.
But one day, after many, many days of lying still,
she found her feet beneath her
and began to walk. With no idea where she was going
or what she would do when she arrived, she simply walked.
And walked. Until she walked straight into another miracle
whose ending is yet unknown.

Once there was a girl who stood, toes curled
above the highest sun-drenched cliff, on the edge
of all she had known before. Her heart leapt to see
plains and river valley, white mountains and a glorious future
ahead. And she was happy
to have come so far. A gentle smile broke forth
and lit her face as the winds blew through her golden hair
like fingers stretching from the very hand of love.
She laughed at the sun, which shone brighter than
her wildest imaginings of it. Filled
with warmth and a gratitude that spilled
out onto everyone who came into her path,
she spread her arms in praise and certain grace
changed them into wings which carried her
into the West.