Appearances

“You could burn the chair,”

my son says,

grinning and

knowing I am not averse

to such embodied

acts of faith,

at times the

crazier the better.

Morning by morning

I now sit across from

that chair—

dove-gray velvet

with brass tacks—

where for three years,

each morning

as the sun rose,

I quietly battled

my loudest fears,

my love’s struggles to

breathe in the night

and his failing heart

the chief subject of

of my prayers.

And then he,

my living Chief

would waken—

thanks be to God—

and descend into the day,

greeting me with

“Hey, honey,”

and sitting across

from me with

a sleepy grin while

patiently listening

as I, wide awake,

rattled off whatever

minor epiphanies

I’d gathered that day

like manna in the

desert of my dread,

blissfully unaware

that the reason

for those profound

revelations of

from Ancient of Days

were born of the newer

terrors that had begun

to assail my heart

with the force of a pandemic

(which, oddly,

the entire world

experienced, too).

As I string together

hundreds of day’s worth

of memories,

I again feel the fear

rooted

in the rituals, yet

I recall the moments when

God appeared,

and the more hopeful

fact of Bill’s appearing,

day after day,

the figurative and the literal

rooting acceptance

of mystery in my soul,

and so

I say to my son,

“No! It is holy,”

and he understands,

having met our God

in holy places, too.

Kitti Murray

December, 2023