avoidance

My abandoned desk is buried beneath chaotic stacks of boxes and bins, containers filled with neglected journals, photographs -- keepsakes spanning five decades -- remnants of captured moments, snapshots of the lives woven most tightly with mine.

In this season of downsizing, the stacks of boxes stand day after day, sentinels quietly waiting to be reduced, contents sorted, gifted, treasured, discarded.

This photo from the early 1960s surfaces -- unfamiliar, unexpected, painful.


My heart aches for the girl on the swing, watching, waiting.

Is she summoning the courage to touch the fish?

Navigating the confusion of having already failed that task?

Or, lost in the obscurity of not being asked at all?



[Jesus] took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. Mark 5:40-42