"Flake"

"Fight 'til your fists bleed, baby. Beat the fate-walls enclosing you, maybe God will unlock the cage of learning for you. Fight 'til your fists bleed, baby. Kick and scream at the wicked things, maybe God will unlock the door you need to walk through.

 When will it happen, baby?It could be near, but then maybe it could be far."

"Dear Miss Bosch,
We regret to inform you that you have not been accepted to our honors program. Your name has been placed on a waiting list, and we will inform you of your updated entry status in May."
My curling fists began to crumple the neat, straight letter head.  Amazing how professorially succinct rejection can be.

Also amazing how much harder "maybe" is than no.

"Maybe" keeps some hope alive, keeps you feeling that perhaps it all will work out after all. If you just work a little harder.  If you just twisted the situation, just flirted a little more.  If you just gave it some time, or maybe if you just made a move.
And we all know that "maybe" rarely means "yes," but it leaves just enough room for hope that, when the final rejection comes, it can hurt so much more.

So once again I find myself waiting, drinking hot chi and watching the snow fall outside the window in huge, frozen chunks of white. Jack Johnson is singing to me from inside the ear-buds.  Singing about maybe and how it pretty much always means no. I scald my mouth on the chi and wrap my fingers around the warm mug. This I can feel: the heat melting into my fingers on the smooth ceramic, the sting on the tip of my tongue.  It is manageable. It quantifiable.

Much the same way anxiety isn't.

So I look ahead at an unknown, uncertain future. Everything hidden and tucked away.  I stand outside in the cold where swirling flakes of ice sting in my eyes and obscure the path. My tears freeze on frostbitten skin. My frozen fingers search for something to hold onto, but in the frozen flakes I'm blind.

And I look behind at a piling weight of rejection, at the flakes building one on one on one till I break under the weight.  And no crystal is heavy alone.  No one is crushed by small stones, but whose fault is the avalanche: the mountainside or the first falling pebble?  Hurricanes are formed in tiny drops, and blizzards are built from fragile flakes.  And who's to say which is the one that kills you?

Oh God, I'm freezing.  And I'm lost.  I'm weak, and I can't be strong anymore.  And I know You are sufficient, but right now I just want to be held.  And I can't even get that this year can I? And I miss my family, and the one room where I felt safe.  And I'm really alone, and that's really not going to change is it?  And when you're the strong one there's no waiting arms to pick you up, to carry you when you falter, when your strength is gone.  And if You're so sufficient, why does this feel so much like dying alone in a snow storm?

And I look out the glass again and notice the snow has stopped. Only the wind picks up little pieces here and there to dance with them in endless dips and twirls.  And I realize that I am no different from they.  No greater. No more mighty.  Delicate, so delicate, and for all my claims of strength, a fragile, frozen vapor -- here for a moment to spin in the arms of the wind, then is gone.  And You are the breath that molds these white drifts.  You are the sculptor of this bleached landscape, the choreographer of this life.

And under all this, who am I?

Tiny, cold, and moribund. 

Yet intricate.  Formed.  Frozen unique.  Never has been another.  Never to be again.  Soiled and filthy, yet somehow seen as white.  "Dear Miss Bosch."  The one, the only, the very, very small.  The very, very loved.

And God, I don't need You to prove Your love.  I just need Your love to be enough.

My chi has grown cold; my breath fogs the window pane.  And for this brief instant on the frigid dance floor, I stop and find something peaceful in the sight of a late February snowfall.

Not a piece is accidental.

Not a flake is out of place.

Not even me.
So I watch.
And think that there's nothing more beautiful.