Each scrap a sentence I regret
Each word a debt I can't forget
Ink that bled through fragile skin
All the places I have been
A paper shook inside my hands
Like brittle leaves from broken lands
The stream kept speaking low and wide
But I had nowhere left to hide
I laid them out upon my knees
Confessions trembling in the breeze
And counted what I could not mend
Beginning stacked against the end
If water carried what I'd done
Would it outrun the rising sun?
If wind could scatter what I'd been
Would mercy know where to begin?
A footstep pressed the meadow grass
I felt a shadow slowly pass
He stood where morning thinned the gray
Quiet eyes a drawn-back day
"What do you hold?" he asked me then
I said, "The way to where I've been"
He held his hand out calm and sure
"Give them to me, I'll keep them yours"
Without a pause, without a plea
I placed the pages silently
Into the palm of one who knew
The full account and deeper truth
He bound them tight with steady thread
Fixed them where the arrow led
Set the shaft against the string
Wooden wound and reckoning
The bow was bent, the sky stood still
The air leaned in against the hill
The current hushed, the trees held breath
Creation braced for what came next
He loosed the line
And the arrow climbed past the ridge
Past the reach of time
Through the wind that tore the blue
Carrying every word I knew
Higher still
Until my eyes lost its silver in the skies
I searched the horizon's burning rim
But it was gone beyond my sin
Gone beyond my sin
Never to be found again
The meadow breathed, the stream ran on
The trembling in my hands was gone
I turned to thank the steady frame
Of the quiet man who bore my shame
That's when I saw along his hands
Where cord had pressed like crimson bands
Where skin was torn yet held the bow
Scars that I had come to know
The arrow flew where none could see
Out of sight, out of reach of me
No hundred field, no searching eye
Will find what left that open sky
Out of sight, forever free
No one will ever recover me
The stream still moves behind my home
But I no longer sit alone
6:28
