Between Two Rivers

 Jehovah,

Tonight the stars hang heavy, not because they are brighter,

but because I am softer.

Softer than I meant to be.

The quiet speaks too loudly when my chest is tired from holding back

a name I do not say aloud, but feel pulsing beneath my skin

like the low drumbeat of approaching rain.

Why, Jehovah?

Why can our names not be braided together like sweetgrass,

bound not by force, but by reverence?

Why must every time I step close,

the wind remind me

there is a line between us I cannot cross?

I have walked the ridgelines of this question.

I have knelt by the fire and asked the smoke,

asked the rivers, asked the canyon where my voice echoes and dies.

Each time, I feel your silence like a stone in my pouch:

not cruel—just certain.

You whisper only this:

“Wait.”

And that is the hardest part.

Because you don’t say what I’m waiting for.

Is it healing?

Clarity?

The loosening of my grip on something

you never meant for me to hold?

Still… I love..

And not in the noisy, clinging way the world teaches.

But in the way the trees do—rooted, still, always reaching

even if the sky never fully answers.

They walk different ground than I do.

Their path moves through fields I cannot follow.

You have made us different—this I accept.

But why the nearness, then?

Why the flickers of understanding that feel like shared wind?

Why give me the scent of cedar if I am not meant to touch the bark?

Some days I think I’m learning.

Other days, I’m just surviving the ache of understanding too much

and not enough all at once.

I want to ask you things

my tongue does not dare shape.

I want to know if love without promise

is still holy.

I want to know if waiting without outcome

is still obedience.

I want to know why you let me feel so deeply

for someone you will not let me claim.

But I don’t ask.

Instead, I bring you what I do have:

This woven bundle of questions,

this ache wrapped in leaves and patience.

I bring you my hands, open.

My mouth, quiet.

My steps, steady—even when my heart is not.

You are the One who paints fire into the west each night.

You are the One who carved wolves from wind

and taught rivers to yield without surrender.

Surely you know

what you are doing with my heart.

So I lay it here, again,

on the soft moss at your feet.

If this love is only to make me kinder,

so be it.

If this waiting is only to teach me faith,

I will learn.

And if this distance is part of your mercy,

then I will trust it,

even as it hollows me

into something you can use.

I will not rush the stars.

I will not pull the river upstream.

But Jehovah, please—

don’t let this ache be wasted.

Make it something good.

Make it something that honors you.

I am still listening.

Even when I do not understand.

—Your daughter of sky and stone