Spaces where I don’t belong

It is a difficult thing to care.

Bruises

I was told to detach myself
Not to get too emotionally invested
When you’re spending time with those people
Some painful falls are to be expected

But a “bad apple” is still an apple
And what’s grace without it?

See I made the mistake of falling in love
with a place that’s chaos like a barn
mangy as that one with a manger and a baby
(who we pretend didn’t poop* on himself
and spit up when he was eating)

and I let my heart get tied up
in dangerous things
in too many people
so that each life boat rope they threw me
wrapped around my heart and
knotted
it
tight

The coarse fibers of twine
have kept me up at night
and ropes cut away
leave the worst indentations
nicks and bruises

But is the Sacred Heart of Jesus
just a glowing valentine
outside a white man’s chest
a plastic candy heart
he won’t even look at

or is his skin ripped and raw
above the bent bars of a ribcage
a heart that broke loose
its tissues bruised
and frayed?

I used to spend so much time afraid
to use this electric muscle
whose first job was to
keep pumping outward
I kept it behind my own bone walls
But every chest
rises
and
falls

And what is grace without
a rise and a fall?

Are these clues to something?

(I stole this from an e-mail I sent. Totally cheating, but totally real.)

A man came in to the Welcome Center (again, my station at the shelter where I volunteer) a couple weeks ago and was waiting to make an ID card. The computer was being wonky and took awhile, so as he was waiting, he asked me if we had any string. He showed me a cross that he was wearing around his wrist and said he wanted to put it around his neck instead. I couldn’t find any string in the office, so I looked in my backpack.

Lo and behold, in the abandoned crevaces of the front pocket, I found a tiny Ziploc-esque pouch with string and beads and beaded string from a reflection in a prayer/community group I was in about a year ago. I have a lot of symbolic attachment to string and wrists and other things that make up the nuances of this story, but long story less long I gave it to him and he was exceedingly gracious: “Really? I can keep this? Are you sure I can take all the other beads too? Did you make this? How did you do this? Are you serious, I can keep this?”

Here is the really odd but also sappy part. The next Saturday I was at the Welcome Center, and since there were a lot of people in there and the other volunteers were working the desk, I was sitting in the back and kind of zoning out. And all of a sudden the man was back, in front of the desk holding out a green Patrón box sealed in medical tape. He looked at me and I recognized him. He proudly showed me he was wearing the cross around his neck, hanging on the string I gave him. Then he held out the box again.

“I’m pretty sure I can’t take this…” I said.

“Nah,” he said. ”It’s just a few little gems I found.”

So eventually I took the box, gave thanks, and he quickly left.

I slowly (and awkwardly) broke open the box to find: green gift tissue with a little glue on it, one small screw, two dead lighters, half a book of matches, a small red flower with a green craft feather on it, the zip top of a tiny plastic Ziploc like the one in which the string and beads came, two candy wrappers, two first aid kit-esque packets of pain relievers I think, a red plastic packaging tie (the kind that looks like a string of tiny cones), and two translucent pebbles and one opaque one (dark brown).

The other people working sniffed the items, joked that they were probably clues to a dead body or something, warned me that the man might be at least a little weird if not dangerous. Unsure of what else to do with it all, we left the bright green Patrón box in the Welcome Center for a little while, which is especially ironic since this place also houses a recovery program.

We disposed of the box, but we kept the sentiments.

How do you spell your name?

He came up to the Welcome Center (my station as a volunteer at a local homeless shelter for men) on a Tuesday morning and asked if the chaplain was in. No, unfortunately. He asked for someone else, I can’t remember whom, and said he was leaving that day, leaving for Nashville and couldn’t come back another time. He wanted to say thanks for letting him stay there. So he opted to leave a message.

He asked me to write for him and carefully spelled out his name, which I underlined at the top of the scrap of paper. There was something childlike about him, about his mouth. He seemed to have a kind of speech impediment that softened his R’s into W’s and a kind of speech gift that made everything he said simple and golden.

“What’s your message?” I asked brightly.

I could not catch up to write it all right away. I wrote slowly, maybe to make sure my writing could be clear and sure, maybe to match his speech.

I am very, very sick. I am dying of cancer. Please pray for me. Thank you for all of the help. I am going home to Tennessee and need all the love, thoughts, and prayers I can get so I can make it to Tennessee.

I asked him if he’d like to sign his note. He scrawled in an illogical mix of capitals and lowercase:

from a true brother

I taped his message on the bulletin board inside the Welcome Center, alongside notes like “Pick up your contact lenses” and volunteer lists and policy updates.