Dear Darkness

Darkness, you feel permanent.
As the healthy fall sick, casualties of humanity’s pursuit of frenzy and movement, casualties of being alive.
Darkness, are you outside?
In them? In me?

Darkness, you feel thick yet transparent, pressing in so hard I cannot breathe, yet so imperceptible to sight, a hallucination, a fixation of my mind on all that is wrong and unable to be fought with anything but, more darkness.
Isolation. Solitude. Unemployment… Stop.

But Darkness, if we stop, don’t we die?
Stop breathing, it’s the end.
Stop moving, we’re left behind.
Stop pushing, we’ll have nothing left to show.
Stop.
Darkness, you give us no choice but to stop.
Stop pushing, we’re depleting ourselves.
Stop moving, we’re creating chaos.
Stop. Breathe. It’s the end.
Of what was.
Of who we were.
Before the global, stop.

Dear Darkness, it’s the end of false control,
Of etching each moment of the day into an unforgiving schedule before the sun’s peaked its eyebrows over the clouds.
Of giving more and more and more until all we have is less, a mess, obsessed with all we lack.
Stop.

Darkness, I have detested thee.

Yet.
And Yet.
Darkness, you are too predictable, twisting good til it oozes bad, plaguing saints and sinners both, you do not discriminate – a lesson to be learned from you, darkness.
You spare not one, none of us human beings freed from your anxieties tightening grip on our throats, chokes where we once spoke of dreams and morning light.
The one human, misunderstood, ordinary, anxious human.
Darkness, you spare not one.

But Darkness, neither does the one.
Darkness did you see?
The tree, wounded hanging wounded, both in pain because of me.
Darkness, you fooled us then.
Emmanuel forsaken by Abba, man hating man, racism and xenophobia and pride pulling final breath from the very lungs of God. Stop.

Darkness, you won.
Convincing us we do not belong to one another, no such gift as a sister or brother, that the life worth loving, saving, worshipping is me. Only me.

But Darkness, were you there?
Mary, a woman. A woman, outcast, unaccepted, overlooked, the first witness to your defeat. The first true proclaimer of the resurrection. A woman. Were you there?
Jesus, a jew. A jew, rejected, betrayed, crucified, the first victor over you. The first of the resurrected ones. A jew. Were you there?
Women. Jews. Slaves. Migrants. Everyone. Welcome. Here.

Darkness, we have found each other.
Through broken bread and poured wine.
Through women and migrants and prisoners and LGBTQIA+ friends and muslims and addicts and slaves and jews and foreigners.
We have found each other.
We are finding each other.
We are found.

Darkness, you cannot keep us from each other.
Sheltering in place solitude, hospital floor mania, isolation-induced depression, violent home prisons, unemployment anxiety – even and especially beds holding our lost – you cannot keep us from each other.
Because Darkness, you never won.
Your illusion of control and oppression and violence painted across our consciousness, we cannot forget you, ignore you, implore you.
But Darkness, you. stop. here.

Without morning rays lighting dew drops on leaves you’d surely win, but darkness, look.
The sun is rising.