Nothing can touch you.
You wear an electric halo
that keeps you safe
from memory.
You are made new again,
clean as a baby,
nothing can be your fault.
You are a saint
without a history,
preparing to perform
your first miracles.
You will be generous and blind.
You will sniff out pain
like God’s own bloodhound.
You smile and your smile
leads you through the day,
empty as the halls
you walk up and down,
up and down,
going nowhere,
empty as your face
somehow still wet
with tears you didn’t shed
                        

Sometimes you survive
like Robinson Crusoe.
Alone in a strange place
you steal what you can use
from the broken body
of your life.
Nothing will ever be the same.
The scraps you find
you must now fit
to some new purpose,
like bits of broken china
set in clay
to make a mosaic,
they have a ragged
second-hand beauty,
and are a testament
to the kind of thrift
great failures force on us.
Nevermind,
take your grief
and make a basket
for your tears 
so they don’t go to waste.
                        

Some crazy angel
put her finger on me
and pinned me down here
for you to find,
the kind of useless prize
that comes tucked in the bottom
of the crackerjack box
you bought without thinking.

Such gifts have short lives
and can’t make good
on many promises,
but it’s too late now to turn away
to say you weren’t home
or you lost your invitation-
You can’t pretend we never met.

There are some miracles
too hard to refuse.

So open your arms for me
my most reluctant winner
and take whatever blessings
I can give.